


stand and deliver your diamond ring

by lady_peony



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Female Persona 5 Protagonist, Fluff, Genderswap, Persona 5: The Royal Spoilers, Romance, check warnings in notes, low key romance but high key longing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24356233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_peony/pseuds/lady_peony
Summary: "Weren't you afraid," Akechi asks her, "the first time you entered a human heart?"Akira looks up from her glass, locking eyes with Akechi. "Girls grow up with stories about monsters in the dark," she says, and shrugs. "I don't know how much of a difference it makes now that I can see them."
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 36
Kudos: 246





	1. with a sword and pistol at her side, to meet her true love, to meet her true love away did ride

**Author's Note:**

> +For more detailed warnings: canon-typical violence and crimes, mentions of suicide/death, mentions & brief scenes of sexual harassment, also these characters are teens so they may make out once they finally stop doing the whole 'staring while pining inside their heads' stage  
> +spoilers for events from persona 5 royal will be here  
> +this will not rehash all the game events  
> +some vaguely non-linear storytelling is happening here  
> +pls don't ask me what a plot is this is just entirely an id fic poured onto the page with a genderswap Fem!Akira Kurusu
> 
> +uhh so what happened was like  
>  **ATLUS** : no you can't play as a girl MC in persona 5 it's just not happening  
>  **me** : throwing up two middle fingers at canon before entering a berserk typing mode in front of a keyboard
> 
> +title is a reference to the ballad ["Sovay, the Female Highwayman"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9tr4eqw6MY), lyrics to be found in end notes

Watch closely. Watch the cards.  
  
Can you see them?  
  
In one universe, the card flips over—a black jack.  
  
In another deck, in another universe, a hand pulls up the corner of the top card.  
  
Look again. The card flips over—a queen of hearts.  
  
What difference does it make? Still vengeful, still following their own sense of justice—a Wild Card. A Trickster.  
  
This is what she knows: Akira Kurusu is a 16-years-old girl, a disgraced daughter, a delinquent student newly banished from her hometown to the city. To be forgotten or forgiven, or to rise up in flames like a firework candle—who can tell?  
  


* * *

  
"Are you doing all right, Kurusu-kun?" 

Akira opens her eyes. The sound of the TV reporter from the screen behind her continues on smoothly, " _—that's all for the people's opinion segment of the current government leadership. Now, moving on to TBS's poll for our top twenty music hits of the week—_ "

In front of her, Akechi Goro lowers his cup to his saucer, his expression all curiosity and alertness.

"Ah—no. I'm fine." She slides the glass lid in her right hand over the jar of Ethiopian Mocha Harrar before her. A strong aroma. Blackberry notes. That's right. "I was just thinking."

"About?"

"Politics." It was a Sunday today, after all. She really does admire Yoshida-san for doing what he does. She didn't know which was worse—the jeers and taunts that sometimes leapt out at him, or the usual cold dismissal of the passing crowd—

_'What's the point?' a salaryman with slumped shoulders had muttered, his briefcase nearly dragging along the concrete, 'He can shout all he wants each week, but nothing will change, for him or for us.'_

"Oh? Are you considering it as a future career?"

"And if I said I was?" She pushes the jar back into its proper place between the other beans, turns around to look for a towel. The coffee pots, the French press, the row of siphon makers—those would need to be cleaned and wiped down once Akechi leaves.

In the meantime, he's still here. He's not looking at the files he had taken out a half hour before, stacked on his left, or the folded up newspaper laid flat atop his briefcase. His eyes instead are focused on her with—well, interest.

She only blinks slowly, once, twice. Doesn't look away. "I didn't think someone who works mostly with the police would have many opportunities to speak to politicians—but I could be wrong. Are you going to tell me it's too unconventional a path for me?"

_'It will be a hard path,' Yoshida-san had said the second time they met, his brow crinkling, 'but something in your eyes—yes, I think you would have the determination to make it.'_

"Kurusu-kun is a very capable person. I wouldn't dare."

She laughs, though it's more of a quiet huff of air from her mouth. "No, no need to sugarcoat it. I'm well aware of the statistics—under 20% wasn't it? But, well—there's no law that says we can't try to change things, no matter how deeply rooted they seem to be in this society."

"Right. Just because the odds are difficult doesn't necessarily mean you wouldn't succeed." Akechi leans in a little, his elbow sliding in closer over the counter. "Though, I am curious—what do you plan to do if you do succeed, but the changes you wish to make are not embraced by the public? Or if they simply decide to ignore it?—'Ignorance is happiness'—isn't that how the saying goes?" 

"I'll just have to take my time with it. If I can't do it—it'll still be easier after for someone else to take up the banner after me." She shrugs, matches Akechi's pose by propping an elbow on the counter. "You have to enter the tiger's den to catch its cub—isn't that how the saying goes?" 

"An optimist's perspective." He smiles. A curve of white teeth. "I'll concede to your point, however. If you told me you were going up against a tiger—I believe you would put up quite a fight." 

"Do you doubt my leadership potential? Think carefully—unless you've been hiding a secret craving for ice-cold coffee for the next few weeks."

"No. Not at all. You have a knack for listening to others, and a good grasp on how to keep a cool head while sticking to your beliefs—that's already ten steps ahead compared to most of the politicians I've observed." 

Ah. She's a bit flattered. Just a bit. What would be the best response—a simple thank you? Compliment him back? 

On what exactly? The graceful way he drinks his coffee? His patient explanations when teaching her the rules of billiards? That his suit jacket fits him really well?

No. No. And definitely no. She nixes that idea entirely.

"Would you be willing to be my first star endorsement then, Detective Prince?" She drops the towel from her right hand onto a shelf, and strikes a pose she had seen off a cover of one of the magazines around the cafe—pointer finger and thumb extended, framing her face from under her chin.

He laughs, his eyes crinkling up a little as he does. "I wouldn't mind, as I was asked so nicely to be your first. I don't know if I still would be a detective then, or if campaign laws would allow for it—but ask me again, in the future."

"In ten years then," Akira says, and folds her hands around Akechi's empty cup, lifts it off the counter. "I'll hold you to your word, Akechi." 

* * *

Akira spins the pool cue once between her fingers, before moving forward to set it down on the table.

Sounds of billiard balls rolling— _clack, clack, clack_ —across tables and the occasional thud of darts against targets drift through the air to her ears. While the atmosphere in Penguin Sniper wasn't exactly silent, it wasn't too noisy for her tastes either.

She moves closer to her bag. Unzips the top of it. Akechi hadn't returned from wherever he had gone off to yet in the lull between their games. It might be a good time to check text messages.

What else had she planned for this week? There was a new DVD she had wanted to rent. Ann, in preparation for a new photoshoot, had been throwing around some dates to get them all together at the gym where Akira and Ryuji had gone to before to improve her endurance. Ohya still needed Mishima's contact info from Akira. Kasumi had been making noises about getting Akira's input on her music for a new routine. There was that history report that needed to be finished before Thursday at the latest—

"Excuse me, miss."

Akira turns. 

Two boys push themselves up from their seats in a far corner by an empty pool table and the darts area. Both seem to be third-years in high school, or just a little older, perhaps in their first year in college. They're not wearing uniforms. 

One of them is taller than her, with waves of hair that hint at a painstaking amount of devotion to style without much success, a watery imitation of some idol singer's hairstyle. As his hand rises to push back his hair, a silver watch glints loosely off his wrist. His palm passes over his face to show a lazy smile and sharp-cornered eyes.

His friend doesn't seem as styled, in contrast—brown-ish hair, a lean and stretched out sort of figure, in a green sweater and jeans. It's an uncharitable thought, but something about him also reminds her of Mishima—vaguely unnoticeable, but for the somewhat obsequious air in his posture. His taller friend was more the leader then, and he the follower.

"Hey, you there. I was just asking you a question." This was from the wavy-haired guy. "Aren't you bored of just playing by yourself, here?" He slides in closer, places a hand on the green baize of the unused pool table parallel to Akira's table.

"I'm here with a friend." Akira angles down her phone, and slips it into her jacket pocket. "Sorry. Did you have something else you needed to ask?"

"See, my friend here, Hiro-kun, is new to Kichijoji—" the wavy-haired guy elbows the green-sweater guy besides him, who gives an awkward dip of the head "—You look like someone who's been in the city a while—do you know somewhere lively to go to here?"

"I don't know this area that well. Sorry." Stay polite. Show no fear. Akira flattens her palms against the sides of her skirt. Tips up her chin. "But there's an information desk at the entrance of Kichijoji. They can give you recommendations there." 

Perhaps they really were new to the area, and just wanted somewhere fun to go. 

"Come now, you don't need to be so stand-offish—say, why don't we go walk around together, maybe get a coffee and talk?" His smile is still friendly, but the way he's stepping around the corner of the table that was between them, moving towards her sets off alarms in the back of her mind.

The other boy—Hiro-kun—besides him looks more uncertain now, but he's not saying anything.

Move. She needs to move.

At her back is a row of stools, pushed in beneath the edge of the table that runs along the length of the right wall. She's in the narrow strip of space between the two pool tables—boxed in. 

Look up—there's fewer people in the club now, at this hour—and the two other customers that she can see on the stools by the front are keeping their heads down. 

Where did that confidence go when she first helped Kasumi? Where's the surefire responses, the ready words that she always has as Joker? It's a different situation, somehow, when she's alone—and two against one.

Just refuse their invitation. Turn them down. 

_I'm fine here._

_No, thanks._

_Leave me alone._

Her lips part—but her voice seems to have frozen in her throat. The man is now five steps away from her—four steps—three—

She's wearing her Shujin uniform today. Hitting them with a pool cue is an option, but—an overreaction. Violent. Uncalled for, when they were just talking to her. 

_"—Damn brat!—"_

That's what they would say—so what should she do—what should she—?

"I got your water, Akira-chan."

Akechi's voice. His hand, light on her shoulder.

In a motion so quick she almost doesn't notice it, he pulls her away from the closed-in space between tables to the left side, where there was more standing space.

A water bottle now rests between her palms, the chill of it a welcome feeling.

Akechi shifts on his heel, stepping half an inch away from her. From the way he's maneuvered her, half of his back is in front of her, in between her and the two boys. She can see the shoulder of his familiar brown blazer, the ends of his hair just above it. 

Their glances catch for a moment when he turns his head to look at her, his brow furrowing slightly at whatever expression she is making then. "So. What do we have here?" His back shifts, his posture turning straight and poised. "Do you know these two, Akira-chan?"

"No. I—I don't know them." One of her hands tightens over the top of the water bottle she's holding. She'll get back at him about the nickname later.

"All right. Are we finished with our game today?" 

"Yes."

"That's good." He reaches his arm past her to grab her schoolbag off the stool it had been resting on, hefts it over his shoulder. "Come on."

The touch of fabric, soft under her fingers. Something warm. Grounding. 

Oh.

He had slipped her hand into his left elbow as they had moved away from the table. She had automatically shifted the water bottle into her other free one.

"We only wanted to talk with her! It's not like we were trying to scare her or anything!"

This comes out as a shout from one of the two behind them. The idol wannabe? 

Next to her, Akechi stops moving. She stops too.

Akechi turns his head, and doesn't say anything. Merely stares.

Akira cranes her neck so she can look behind. She can't see his eyes from this position, but whatever Akechi is showing on his face is enough to make the two boys go quiet, draw back without another word.

Akechi turns to face forward. Closes his eyes. Exhales a breath through his nose—once. Twice. 

He opens his eyes again. Smiles at her, or tries for something like it—it's a little more brittle than the ones he usually wears. "Kurusu-kun. My apologies for the wait. Should we go? Or—I do have some acquaintance with the owner. If you like, he could banish those two from ever setting foot here."

Akira tries to smile up at him, though she thinks it's a weak attempt. "No. You don't need to do so. I'm not worried—if I come here, it's always with others. Can't play darts or pool with just one person alone, you know."

Akechi makes a noise of assent. "Let me know if you change your mind. Careful—we're at the stairs."

He doesn't untangle her hand from his elbow as they make their way down the stairwell. Doesn't pull away until they reach the train station, actually, and her line arrives. 

"Sorry about the wrinkles on your sleeve," is what comes out of her mouth later, when she picks up his call in front of Leblanc.

"I need to take it in for laundry tomorrow, anyways. If anything, I should be the one apologizing. I meant to let you relax there, and well. The outing didn't seem very pleasant for you."

"It wasn't all unpleasant—my game has been improving against you, hasn't it? Besides, I wasn't—scared."

"I wouldn't think less of you if you happened to be. I've seen more than a few cases—well. Those are stories for another time, Kurusu-kun."

"Back to Kurusu-kun, again?" A hand lifts up to her mouth, half-muffling a laugh. "Not Akira-chan? Am I allowed to call you Goro-kun now?"

Silence, for one breath, then another. 

Had he hung up?

"Good night, Kurusu-kun," he says at last, a ghost of a laugh lurking beneath his voice. "I'll call you when I'm next free."

She could have imagined it, but the sound of his words before he hangs up sounds genuinely amused. A touch warmer than she would have expected.  
  


* * *

Autumn passes not in a gentle flurry of leaves but of complications, each one tangling itself with the next, as October slinks into November.

Makoto and Futaba join up. Haru too. Okumura's Palace. The announced rewards for their arrest. Akechi, his lips curved into that cold and hard smile when chatting with the Thieves during the festival, a smile he had never previously worn towards her. The plans for Sae's Palace.

Exams are coming up too. Should she drop one of her part-time jobs? Helping out at Lala's bar was interesting but the shifts tended to run late and exhaust her more; working in the convenience store wasn't too overwhelming, if dull at times—perhaps she should cut back on shifts at the flower shop?

Not to mention the Mementos requests. 

It's good for redirecting stress at least.

Should she use Power for Hamaon? The Shadow seems to have stood strong against most other attacks—fire, ice, psychic—

"Fox is burning! Someone help him!" Oracle's voice, slightly panicked.

"Mona!" Joker looks over and jerks her chin in Fox's direction. Mona nods, and summons Zorro for a Diarama. That should be enough to hold Fox up, for a few more turns. Now for herself—

"Power! _Hamaon_!" The bright arc of the Bless attack flies out towards the Shadow.

Damn. It had hit her target, but not enough to knock it down.

Crow, on her left, throws out a _Mudoon_ from Robin Hood, but the Shadow doesn't even blink as it nullifies it. 

Curse attacks are a no-go then. Calm down. There has to be some other way.

Crow can still use bless attacks. Fox and Mona could still use their physical moves at least.

"Go _down_!" Joker hisses out from between her teeth, blue flames surrounding her back as she calls up Power again.

Crow, then Mona, then Fox follows.

Her knife flips easily from her side into her hand, and she raises her voice to give the command: "Let's go!"

Joker launches herself forward, confident, as always that her team is following behind her.

The Shadow falls. Mitsuyu Togo promises to do better, to apologize to her daughter. And Joker watches it go, fade up and away into the red of Mementos in a scattering of light.

Mona-bus hums, as he normally does during the ride back to the entrance from the Path of Akzeriyyuth.

Noir is at the front, insistent on taking her driving skills for a spin. Makoto had taken the seat next to her, with Fox slipping in to the last seat up front—"It'll give me an opportune chance to complete a few scenery studies on the way back, Queen." 

In the middle, Oracle, Panther, and Skull.

Which leaves—yes. Her and Crow in the back.

She is grateful though—Ann and Futaba may have mentioned more than once how Akira's height made it a little uncomfortable to squash her in with three people in a row, and with eight team members to cart around, the space in the bus needed to be rearranged as was most fitting.

Joker leans back against the bus seat. In the front, sounds of a minor squabble starts up, with Makoto trying to recite math formulas from a ring of flashcards—had she stored those in Mona's glove compartment?—and Yusuke rhapsodizing about mathematically beautiful principles in sculpture. Futaba has jumped into the conversation as well, and has started yelling something about—Klein bottles? 

"Quite lively, isn't it?"

She looks at Crow. Crow looks at her, his lips quirked up into something like a half-smile. 

She shrugs. Pushes up the domino mask over her forehead, and shoves back her bangs for a second before letting them fall again.

Well, what was the harm? They were all inside the Mona-bus now. She was pretty sure they were going too fast for passing Shadows to get a good look at any of their faces. 

Trying to focus on Crow's face through her mask made her feel like she was going to go cross-eyed anyways.

"Yeah. You know—," she tips her head towards everyone in the seats in front of her, "—that's us. The stealthiest Phantom Thieves on this side of Japan."

"The only Phantom Thieves, I hope," Akechi says. "Or I'm foreseeing a lot more hours at the police department in my future." 

"Have you been working yourself too hard?" Akira turns slightly to the left, feeling the faintest pang of guilt. "With your detective work and cram school and all." 

"I don't mind. Couldn't I say the same for you, dear Leader?" Akechi, who previously had his head propped on his left elbow against the window turns towards her, and uncrosses his legs. He cracks open an eye to glance over at her. "Perfect school attendance, a part-time barista, and Phantom Thieves business—that's a fuller plate than most normal students, isn't it?"

"Perhaps. But that's just the way it is, now." She doesn't correct him on the part-time barista thing when it was more like four part-time jobs at any given time of the week. 

It's hot today—humid really, even thought Mementos is _entirely_ underground—and Mona still doesn't have AC. She reaches up a hand and tugs a bit on the ends of her hair—it's been growing slowly, the tips extending just a little past her shoulders. She's glad she didn't decide to keep it long, as she once did.

"You used to have long hair?"

Akira must have said that last part aloud. "Ah—yes. All the way through junior high. I only changed it in high school because of a deal."

"A deal?" A heightened note of curiosity, his syllables tilting upwards.

"Yes." What was that classmate's name? It started with an E—was it Emi? No. Eri. Eri-chan. "Since we had kept our hair long in junior high, she said it would be a good idea to get it cut in the summer right before our first day in high school. To show off our new stylish selves, she said."

"So what happened, on your first day?"

"Ah, that." Akira taps a finger against her thigh, watches the shadows of Mementos flicker through the window over her red gloves and black pants. "On the first day, I showed up with my hair cut shorter—well, up to about here." She holds up a hand, taps it a bit above her collarbone. "Eri-chan was in the classroom with some new hair clips—but she had kept hers long. She had been busy with a singing camp before school started, you see, and said she had forgot about it."

"Hm. So it seems despite what your nonchalant exterior suggests, you're also the type to seriously believe that people should keep their promises."

"A thief may use deception in their methods, but that doesn't mean that I don't understand that honesty is important." Akira laces her fingers together over one knee. "Especially for people who are close."

"On that point, I believe I would agree—"

" **NOIR, WATCH THE BRAKES**!"

A lurch and a skidding sound—

Akira's whole body lifts from her seat one inches, two inches, and her head pitches forward as her stomach sinks—

The bus stops spinning. 

Instead of having collided face-first into the back of Skull's skull—which, ouch, it would have hurt—Akira only finds herself breathing a little faster as the Mona-bus settles.

Akechi's right arm had flung itself out in front of her, bracing diagonally across her shoulder and her waist to keep her pressed against her seat.

"Thanks," she says. 

Akechi's eyes flicker over her face for a second, before he pulls his arm away. "Sorry for the presumption. You're not hurt?"

She shakes her head. "No. I don't think so—but my mask—" Her fingers scramble for a bit, before she finds her mask on the floor next to her feet. She brings it up, readjusts it around her face. "Everyone all right?" she calls out. 

Fox is making distraught noises about his dropped pencil—"it was a _Tombow Mono 2B_ pencil, Noir! _—_ ". In the middle row, Oracle, Panther, and Skull throw up three thumbs-up signs simultaneously.

From the front, Noir's voice is sheepish as she says, "My apologies everyone—I had forgotten about the turnstiles at the entrance. And Mona-chan can't drive through them." 

"Aww, no worries Noir! At least we all got to the entrance in mostly one piece, yeah? Not your fault that Mona can't do cool jumps." 

"Hey! If you don't like it, I can turn around and drop off Skull to walk his way back up here—"

"All right." Joker stands from her seat. Best to cut this off before it flared into a more heated squabble. "Everyone, out. Good work today."

They all do so.

When Akira collapses into bed, she's grateful that tomorrow is Saturday. Her muscles ache. At least school is just a half-day tomorrow. She can manage that much.

Saturday morning dawns, nice and sunny. She's still sore.

This day has just started, and it already sucks.

When the school day is over, Akira almost finds herself staggering under Morgana's weight in her bag as the door of Leblanc jingles.

"Welcome—Whoa, kid! You doing all right?"

Boss puts down the towel he had been holding. 

Oh. Akechi's here too, standing by the counter.

She lifts her hand to wave at him—and Akechi's face turns alarmed when she tips sideways, her left hand grabbing at a corner of a table and clenching into a fist to keep herself upright.

Morgana lets out a worried-sounding meow.

"I'm—fine—" At least she thinks she is. "I'll just sit here for a while. Sorry Boss."

"Akira-kun? You really don't look well." 

Akira breathes in, deeply. Steadies her legs to slide herself into the diner booth. Places the bag with Morgana on the space by her left.

"Nothing much to worry about, Akechi. I'll just go round to 777 in a bit to pick up some medicine." 

"Well—I'm sure we have medicine in a kit somewhere here—" Boss makes a motion like he's going to the back of the kitchen to search around the shelves.

Akira lifts a hand. "No. It's fine. It won't take me long to go buy a new pack."

"I can go." Tap, tap, tap—the sounds of deliberate steps over wooden floorboards.

"What?" Akira cricks back her neck to see that Akechi has stopped by her table. His expression right now is—oddly sympathetic. 

"What kind do you need?"

"Umm...stomach pain." Akira sits up a little straighter, blinking a little more than she usually would at Akechi, hoping he would catch on her message. She can ask Boss to get it, if she really has to but—

Akechi just nods. "Understood. I'll be back in a few minutes, all right?" And with that said, he tugs at the cuffs of his gloves, and breezes out the door.

Morgana shimmies out from her bag to hop onto the seat next to her, turns to look up at her with big, anxious eyes. Akira pulls her phone from her bag, hoping her text goes through quickly enough.

 **Akira >>** _you know when i said 'stomach pain' i didn't mean like regular stomach pain_

 **Akechi >>** _I did say I understood you perfectly, Akira-kun. Please don't worry about it._

 **Akira >>** _ok_

A clink on the table makes her look up from the screen. 

"There, kid." Boss waves at the mug of water with a lemon slice bobbing in it. "This should help, until that detective comes back." 

Akira wraps her hands around the mug, feels the warmth seep into her fingertips. "Thanks, Boss."

"Look—I'll close up the cafe early today. You've already worked what—the last three weekends in a row? Why don't you take that mug upstairs with you, so you can rest better?"

Akira nods. She heaves herself up from the booth while holding the mug in hand to head towards the stairs. 

Morgana meows, and jumps up to slide her schoolbag from her seat to the ground, the handles of it grasped firmly between his teeth.

Boss scratches his head, and chuckles. "That sure is one clever cat. There's curry and rice in the fridge if you want any later and—"

A familiar ding rings from his pocket. Boss flips open his phone. "What is—Futaba? Seriously? Huh." He sighs. "She just sent a message saying the electricity in her room has gone out. Maybe some of the other rooms in the apartment too. I better see what's going on."

Akira raises an eyebrow.

Boss shrugs. "No need to worry just yet—she says she's fine and unharmed, thankfully. No fire, as far as she can see." A pause. "Will you be all right with just that Akechi kid around?"

Akira nods. "We're good. We're—friends. You should check on Futaba."

"Well. If you still feel sick later—you can call me, okay? I'll just be right around the corner."

Akira lifts her hand to give a mock salute in acknowledgement. 

Boss leaves.

Feeling as graceful as a beached jellyfish, Akira miraculously manages to make her way upstairs to sink onto the couch. She's only sipped a little at the water in her cup, so she places it down on her workshop table.

Morgana follows a few minutes later, before he spits out the handle of her bag and rolls over on the ground. "Phew! Akira—? I feel sort of bad that you have to carry me in this—is it always this heavy?"

She nods. "It builds character," she adds.

Morgana sniffs, his eyes scrunching up skeptically. "If you say so." He stands, and slinks his way up to the couch. "I'm gonna sit here for a bit."

He then pads right up onto Akira's lap, and curls into a ball.

"Morgana?"

He starts making purring sounds. 

Akira lowers her hand to stroke over his back—one of his eyes flickers open before he closes it again, and keeps on purring.

"Thought you said you weren't a cat?" she says, lightly.

He either doesn't hear her, or ignores her, and keeps on purring. The ache around her midsection eases up, just a little. 

What else was she supposed to do? She'll need to text Doctor Takemi—she can't make it to the next clinical trial today or tomorrow. At least she thinks she can still help Haru on her garden, since that doesn't need too much mov—

"Ah—Akira-kun?"

"I'm in my room. You can come up."

The steps creak, and seconds later, Akechi is hovering at the front of her door.

"Sorry to intrude," he says, his words perfectly polite and posture perfectly controlled.

Morgana stops purring to stare at Akechi for a second, before he closes his eyes and goes back to purring.

"Did, ah, Sakura-san leave you here all by yourself?" He narrows his eyes.

"Mn. It was an emergency. Futaba needed help." Her eyes wander up from the bag in Akechi's hand to his face. "The cafe's closed for now, so it's not a big deal." 

"Oh. Yes." He steps forward, one, two, three, and holds out the plastic bag in his hand to Akira. 

She takes the bag from him and upends it. A small box tumbles into her palm—the familiar blue letters of 'Eve A' stamped on its front. "Thank you. Sorry for making you do this."

It's hard to get to her mug with Morgana still on her lap, but she manages. She skims over the directions on the box before opening it, tips the pills into her mouth and swallows. Gulps down water to follow after.

A drop almost falls from her lips, and she raises a thumb to swipe at it. 

Akechi, for some reason, hasn't left yet. Merely stands in the doorway, silent, observant.

"Hey." Akira puts aside her cup and the medicine. "Did you come to Leblanc today for coffee? The cafe is closed, but I think I can make at least one cup—"

"No. No. I came because of you." Akechi coughs twice, and runs a hand down his tie. "That is to say—I came to return a book. I had picked it up from Leblanc during our last chess match by accident, before I realized that it was yours." 

"Ok." 

"If that's all—I should leave you to recuperate." Akechi dips his head.

He seems—tired. She's not sure how she can tell—the slope of his shoulders? The deepened shadows under his eyes?

"Do you have to go now?" The question flings itself out of Akira's mouth, scattering into the air like it had been launched from Morgana's slingshot. 

Akechi jerks up his head, his eyes widening slightly. "Oh? I don't have anything urgent today, not until the evening—but. You want me to stay?" 

"Yeah. I mean," Akira pushes up her glasses, looks over at her TV set and the DVD besides it. "I haven't finished watching the X-Folders yet, so if you want to, you could stay. Finish it with me."

Akechi doesn't speak for a moment. 

"Only if you want to," Akira says, very gently, because Akechi is frozen in place like she had just asked him to go out and rob a bank with her, instead of just watching some TV. 

Sudden pressure around her wrist. Is Morgana trying to bite her? His teeth hasn't broken skin though. "Hush, Mona," she says, and continues to pet him behind the ears, focusing on that one spot he likes. He lets go. 

A sound of a throat, clearing. "Well." Akechi dips his head again, his eyelids half-lowered. "In that case, I'll stay. Sorry for the imposition." 

She pats the spot on the couch next to her. Akechi sets down his briefcase by the front, and sits. 

They watch the X-Folders.

Morgana is warm on her lap, and Akechi, just next to her, is warm as well. The couch isn't that big—his shoulder and leg press up right against hers.

He's mostly quiet while they're watching, with only the occasional murmured comment or upturn of the lips to let her know he's paying attention.

Some time later, Akira is aware of a vague ache in her neck, and her eyes blink open. The notes of the X-Folders ending theme are floating from the screen before her.

Akechi is very close. A sense of warmth—his left hand is hovering just above her right cheek.

He looks—guilty. "You're awake now. Sorry—I thought it would be best to remove your glasses if you had fallen asleep."

"Did I ever tell you? My glasses are about as real as pyrite."

"Even if they're fake," Akechi draws away his hand, straightening up his posture, "it would be a pity to break them, since you seem to like them so much."

"Ah." Akira's hands drop to her lap, to feel the rise and fall of Morgana's spine. He seems to have fallen asleep, at least. "Did I lock up the cafe, before you came up? Did anyone come in?"

"I locked it from the inside earlier. I think when I left I would have just informed Sakura-san as such by knocking on his door. His building is right around the cafe, is that not so?"

She nods. "Do you have to go now?" Her question now is much quieter than its first iteration.

"Yes. I suppose I do." His eyes flick away to land on his briefcase, the stairway—before shifting back to her face. 

"Okay. Thanks for—staying." 

"Thank you for asking me to." He tugs at his gloves, and the light of the hour infuses a gold gleam over his eyes, the curve of his brow, his lips. His mouth opens, as if he wants to say something more, but he shakes his head, drops it. "Good night, Akira-kun," he says, and goes.

The next morning, in between polishing clean cups and measuring out fresh coffee grounds, Boss seems to be squinting suspiciously towards the entrance of Leblanc, more so than he usually does during the cafe's open hours.

"That detective—Akechi-san—didn't cause any trouble when he was over here yesterday, huh?" Sakura-san says with careful casualness as he slings a towel around his shoulders.

Akira swallows her mouthful of curry, dangles her spoon between her fingertips in the air. "No. He was a perfect gentleman, Boss. And besides," she grins, just a little, "if he wasn't, Morgana would probably claw his face off."

Next to her, Morgana puffs out his chest, and meows in affirmative.  
  


* * *

The sweet scents of ripe persimmons and roasting chestnuts waft through Yongen-Jaya's streets now when she walks to and from the train station, a recognizable perfume in the September air. 777 had also just stocked up on some new sweet potato-flavored items—she might just purchase some, after her next shift there. 

Leblanc had seen a small uptick in customers in the past few weeks—passerbys persuaded by the cooler evening wind towards the warm, golden lights of the cafe. Akira wonders how many cups of coffee would be too much for her today—should she just have one more cup when she returns to Leblanc, before she starts her assignments?

The water seems to be making her drowsy. Gradually, her back, her shoulders loosen, unknot themselves in the heat of the bath.

Idly, one of her hands lifts from the bath, cupping some water to the surface. Even with the steam, she thinks she can almost make out the reflection of her gray irises in her palm.

As the sun draws the curtains more quickly on the skies these days, she seems to have become more inclined to climb into bed earlier. But it's not—always feasible, with the responsibilities she has now. 

Will that get any easier when she's older? 

Hm. Perhaps not—none of the adults she knew had zero troubles to contend with. As the weather became colder, Chihaya had fretted a little over the decreased foot traffic near her fortune-telling stand the last time Akira had seen her—she wasn't sure if she still would be able to pay for the permits she needed next month. Doctor Maruki, in between counseling Shujin students after-school and dealing with his cognitive pscience paper also needed to squeeze in what seemed like an endless number of meetings with Shujin administrators and teaching staff. Kawakami-sensei had her secret second job—Akira frowns. 

She should think more on how to handle that soon. When she first found that out about Kawakami-sensei—

( _"What's Operation Maidwatch?" Akira had said, from just over Ryuji's shoulder._

_"Whoa! What the—" Ryuji dropped the flyer he had been holding. "Uhh—Mishima gave this to me. We thought it'd be uh, good for learning how to talk to girls better."_

_Mishima next to him had nodded, then blinked. "Kurusu-san? When did you show up?"_

_"Hmm." Akira raised a hand to her chin. "I'm a girl, but it could be also useful for me to learn to talk to girls better too. Maybe I could pick up some cooking tips too."_

_Ryuji and Mishima shot a look at each other. Akira pretends not to see it._

_"Well buddy," Ryuji said, and scratched the side of his head, "you know you are my friend and all, but—"_

_"Great," Akira said, and clapped him once on the arm before walking down the hallway with breezy steps. "It'll be a fun hangout," she called out over her shoulder. "I'll text you to see when you've decided on a day for this."_

_Why had she agreed to that operation?_

_One, she didn't want Ryuji or Mishima to get into too much trouble—out of all of them, she would probably be best at improvising, if they ran into a situation. Two, their faces when she said it would be fun were hilarious._ )

But like their trips to Mementos, as they went lower and lower into the depths, the more she learned about Kawakami-sensei's circumstances, the darker things looked.

Secrets and sorrows and secret sorrows—she and her friends can fix some things, but they only know as much as Akira knows. The Phantom Thieves can act, but they look to her to give the word, as their Leader. 

Others' pain and regrets collect in her pockets, like coins thrown into a wishing well, the wish untold to anyone else but the stones and the water. And she carries them while throwing herself into the ocean of Mementos, again and again without drowning.

Lucky for her, she's very good at keeping her head above the waves. 

There's a story, she remembers—the princess who needed to free six princes cursed as swans. The curse could only be broken if she picked nettles from the ground by her own hands, and wove them into cloaks for the princes—all without speaking a single word, even as the thorns pricked into her skin, drawing blood with each tug of her fingertips.

She's not helping six princes though—there are more Mementos requests each week, from all over Tokyo, from older salarymen and anxious students and anguished lovers at their wits' end—

"Kurusu-kun?"

She knows that face. That voice.

"I didn't know I would happen to see you here, Akechi." Akira pulls down her shoes from the shelf at the bathhouse entrance to the ground. Slides in one foot, and pulls up the heel. 

"Ahahaha." Akechi raises a gloved hand to run it over his hair. His eyes are bright, his smile a little slanted, like he had been caught off-guard. "Sakura-san recommended this place actually." 

"Is that right?" Her other shoe is proving a little more stubborn to get on. She taps the toe of it twice against the ground. "I better go—I haven't had the chance to eat dinner, so—"

"Ah." Akechi's voice takes on a cheerful note. "Would you like to eat something with me then?"

Akira stops moving. The glasses she had taken out from her bag dangle in her hand.

She looks at Akechi. His face looks slightly pink, but that could be waved away as the residual heat from the bath.

She twirls the handles of her glasses once. "Okay. Where to?"

"We'll see what's open at this hour, shan't we?" Akechi waves at the door. "After you."

Where they end up is at a noodle stall, tucked away in a side street by the supermarket. The hour is already late—there aren't any other customers at the stall and in the distance, the automatic chimes of the supermarket's doors when it opens and closes are few and far in between. 

Akira nods at Akechi's questioning look. He pinches the edge of the overhanging banner on the top of the stall and lifts it up, just a little higher than Akira's head so she can duck under it with ease. Akira slides into her seat first, keeping her bag on the edge of the bench, and Akechi folds himself in after her.

After an affable " _irasshaimase!_ ", the elderly lady running the stall introduces herself as Michiyo-san. She takes their orders, and moves with a brisk energy that belies her short height.

"I don't think I've seen many of these here around Yongen-Jaya," Akira says. She closes her phone after tapping out a quick text to Sojiro that she would be back much later to lock up, and turns her head to examine the seasoning bottles in front of them.

"No, I didn't expect you would. It's much rarer to see these stalls in urban areas now, save perhaps during summer festivals or other holidays." 

"One shoyu ramen, and one miso!" Two bowls plop down in front of them, with steam curling off the surface of the broth.

Akechi is still smiling, but his brows draw together as he looks at his bowl.

Akira tips her head over, peering at his miso ramen. His bowl has the usual suspects—the slices of braised pork, bean sprouts, the soft half-egg, corn, and thin circlets of green onions with a streak of chili oil serving as a splash of color.

Huh. Did he not like something about his meal? 

She doesn't remember seeing chili oil in the miso ramen she had eaten before with Ryuji. Was it a regional variation? Akira looks over at Michiyo-san, who smiles genially back at Akira from her spot next to a tiny radio, nodding along her head to the music that issued from it. 

Well. Nothing for it. "Akechi." She knocks her right knee against his. "Hey." 

Akechi turns to her, blinks twice. "What is it?"

"Can we switch bowls?"

"I have no objections, Kurusu-kun, but why?"

"Yours looks more interesting than my usual shoyu." 

Akechi looks from his bowl to hers, and then up back to her eyes. He nods, and the crease between his brows disappears.

After some reshuffling of their bowls, Akira takes off her glasses to slip them into her pockets and breaks apart her chopsticks with a smooth, easy motion. She swallows her first bite of ramen and says, "If you were rating Yongen-Jaya's bathhouse on your blog, how favorably would you review it, you think?"

"Well," Akechi says, picking up a fish cake in his chopsticks, "I don't think I would, really. My fans wouldn't expect it of me. However—" a small tug of his lips, a smile with complications behind it, "—it wasn't bad." There's something softer there, something faraway in his tone.

"It wasn't bad?"

"Mn. It brought back some memories. My mother worked in a nightclub, you see—" 

He talks. Akira listens. A missing father—no, not missing, one who abandoned his family, the one who ran away without even a word of regret. A beloved mother, who was there until she wasn't.

"That's my story," Akechi finishes, and stirs his chopsticks through a few floating strands of noodles. "It's not the happiest one—I apologize if I've put you off your food."

"You don't need to apologize." Akira sets down her chopsticks lengthwise across her bowl. "Not for telling the truth." 

Something changes over Akechi's face—a slight widening of the eyes, a certain tilt of the head, like a glimpse behind the curtains of a stage. "I don't think I've told anyone else about this—I wonder why I told you?"

Akira wonders too—but she answers, after taking no more than a second to think over her response.

"The same, hmm? I think you may be right," Akechi says. He sits up a little straighter, lightens his tone. "Fair's fair, Kurusu-kun—what of your family?"

She takes after her father in looks, her mother often said. Tall, with that head of dark curls, and the careful grace of someone winding their way through shelves of fine, breakable porcelain. Her father works for the prefecture's administration—budgets, or accounting, or something of that kind. Her mother works in advertising—bright and cheerful in the office, with flawless nails and unsmudged lipstick hiding a fine-honed ruthlessness needed to navigate and negotiate around the company's internal politics. 

Akechi tips his head to the side and laughs when Akira tells him of the fight she got into in elementary school, and the scolding that followed.

"You were that fierce, Kurusu-kun?" He lowers his hand that he had been chuckling behind. "And you were just, what, seven years old?"

"I was angry," she says, shrugging her shoulders. "That boy shouldn't have taken my friend's Buchimaru toy in the first place, let alone try to throw it onto the school roof." 

If the toy had been stranded up there, none of them would have been tall enough to get it back. When a teacher finally, finally appeared on the scene, the boy had said he had only borrowed the Buchimaru toy to play with it too. As he was the nephew of the school's principal, the matter had been dropped without any more fuss.

Her parents had words for her when she had come home, reprimands for throwing herself into danger, for getting into a fight—not just a loud argument, but a playground brawl, we taught you to behave better than that—after the teacher had contacted them about her behavior. 

"I don't understand," Akira had said, staring at her bruised and bandaged knees that evening, "I had been telling sensei the truth, so why—?"

"Don't you know already, Akira-chan?" her mother had said, her fingers combing through the ends of Akira's curls, "The world is made of stories. A truth is always a harder sell than a sweet lie."

The second time Akira had gotten into trouble, in high school—they hadn't even offered the perfunctory comfort of bandages and reassuring if dubious advice. Just a bland notice of a school transfer in the mail, everything authorized and rubber-stamped, ready to go, and curt remonstrances over the dinner table of 'do you have enough money for a train pass, Akira?' and 'do your best to listen to your teachers and make some upstanding friends, Akira.' 

Akira watches stray flecks of red chili float along the top of her bowl. The ramen and toppings are mostly gone, except for the odd bits of green onion or a scrap of bean sprout.

She looks up. "I think I can finish all the soup in my bowl before you can."

Akechi hums slightly, and opens his mouth. "A challenge? What would be the prize for the winner?"

Akira slides a fist over her open palm, in a mock-thoughtful pose. "The person who finishes last will have to pay the bill."

Akechi gets a glint in his eye. "Oh? Those terms are acceptable."

Without breaking eye contact with Akechi, Akira lifts her bowl of ramen broth in her hands straight to her mouth—and chugs.

Time it carefully. No pauses. Keep your breathing steady.

Slowly, as to not to chip the bowl, she lowers it—empty!—back onto the table. Thank you, Big Bang Burger training.

Akechi on her right also has his bowl glued to his mouth. He has what looks like two spoonfuls left in his. His glance shifts down to her empty bowl, and he stops swallowing his soup, just for a second. 

He closes his eyes and tips his bowl up, up, up and finishes his share. "I concede," he says, lowering his head and his bowl to the table. "It's your win."

"Thank you for treating me, senpai." She picks up her tea, sips primly at it before she glances at him sidelong. "Unless you were going to say you weren't going all-out against me this time?"

"I did say it was your win." Akechi waves at Michiyo-san, who stands from her chair and plucks down a receipt before making her way towards him. "Do you think me dishonest, Kurusu-kun?"

"No." She really doesn't. Suspicious, sometimes. Circuitous, certainly. "But you're not going to let it stay my win for long, are you?"

Akechi opens his mouth, when Michiyo-san cuts in, the dark bandanna in her white hair swaying side to side as she shakes her head. 

"Aah, you young people nowadays. So carefree. You, young man—" Michiyo-san hands the receipt to Akechi, as he takes out his wallet, "—try to remember to take your girlfriend out to some place nicer than a noodle stall next time." The words are said with disapproval, but shortly after, she scrunches her face up into a grin like a kindly grandparent. "Not that this humble place doesn't appreciate your patronage. Please, take your time in finishing your tea. It does my heart good to see a couple get along so well."

Akechi counts out the proper payment, and hands it back to Michiyo-san. She takes it in her hand, refills both of their cups of tea, and retreats back to the radio, turning on the volume a little higher.

Akechi sits, looking like someone had just whacked him across the face with a fan.

Akira blows gently onto her cup of green tea, and doesn't speak.

She doesn't need to open her mouth to ask ' _was this a date?_ ' because—they had agreed, didn't they, wordlessly, not to measure this—whatever _this_ thing was—that found the two of them moving from the aquarium to billiards to darts to cafes. 

It's a fine, delicate thread between them—she's curious to see what it'll grow into.

From the radio by Michiyo-san, a voice warbles over the backdrop of a longing saxophone—an age-old story: lost love, a lady in tears, wandering disconsolately in Shinjuku.

Besides her, Akechi sips at his tea, and slowly seems to gather up his composure. They pick up a light discussion on the book Akira had read, _Wise Men's Words_ , and move on from there to chat about the newest movie releases—most of which Akechi admits he hasn't seen yet. 

Akira finishes her tea. The last dregs leave a tinge of bitterness on the tongue, but the aftertaste of it is still clean and light.

Eventually, they stand up from their seats and part ways. Akechi to the train stop. Akira to Leblanc.

"Where have you been?" Morgana says, jumping up from her bed into a sitting position, his ears swiveling back and forth.  
  
"Out and about," Akira says.

* * *

"Sorry," Akechi tells her, one gloved hand clasping around her shoulder to pull her around to a different direction. "Let's take a shortcut through here, shall we?"

Akira pushes herself up on her tiptoes to look behind her. It's that cafe they had gone to before, in the summer. At its front scurry a small swarm of clicking photographers and chattering reporters, like so many chirping crickets. Crowding in at the edges are a cluster of what looks like high school students and young office workers, all restless murmurs and waving arms.

A dark car pulls up to the cafe, and the driver steps out to open the door. The people in the crowd pull apart to form a path for whoever the guest is, the pitch of their voices overlapping each other with excitement.

"What's going on over there?" Akira says. 

Akechi lets go of her, peers around the wall into a seemingly quiet passageway. "Ah—I believe it's an autumn drama promotion in collaboration with the cafe. Some up-and-coming actor is promoting a new dessert there—they had filmed a climactic confession between the leads at that cafe, so I've heard."

"Mn. Not a fan of the cameras, then." 

"Not at this moment, no. Watch your step there." His shoe nudges away a discarded green bottle from her path. 

It's almost like an optical illusion, she thinks. To see him preen on the cafe's television screen, every inch the personable prince and perceptive detective, making minute adjustments to the turn of his lips and the arch of his eyebrows to reflect the interviewer's mood and the audience's response.

Then on the same day, she watches him cross two streets and slip into an alleyway to avoid being caught in an accidental shot by some wandering eye of a camera. 

No. No, that wasn't exactly a fair assessment. She taps her fingers against the handle of her bag. 

An ambiguous illusion. That was the term.  
  
A Necker's cube. A vase or a face. Diamonds that turned to circles in a mirror's face, like magic.

None of the images themselves were lies. Your eyes just had trouble holding on to both images at the same time. 

She would feel a bit bad if Akechi ran into any trouble with the press today, as she was the one who had happened to text him to see if he was free. That they ran into each other right in front of Kichijoji instead of the entrance of Jazz Jin as usual was a surprise.

The first time they had gone to Jazz Jin, Akira admits, she had looked at the club's doors with a certain measure of wariness. 

She knew the rumors that followed girls who go to dimly lit clubs with smiling boys. Especially good-looking ones.  
  
Akechi did warn her before, hadn't he? That he wasn't only worried about rumors for his own reputation, but for hers as well. 

The rumors that had originally sniffed and snapped at Akira's ankles at Shujin—that she had knifed someone for their wallet, that she had been expelled for dating three sport club captains simultaneously, that she had been suspected of a pregnancy scare—had died down some around the summer, especially after she started scoring among the top ten highest scores in exams. The currents shifted towards the more usual school topics: who was dating whom, who was the persona non grata of the month, Dr. Maruki's sympathetic counseling sessions and so on. 

Ann still dealt with the occasional passing glances and whispers, though sometimes now, there seemed to be a few kindly inquiries about how Shiho was doing. As for Kasumi—she had sounded hopeful about her gymnastic match's results, the last time Akira had talked to her. Perhaps that would be enough to cut off the envious rumors from other students, the ones that caused a certain shakiness in Kasumi's smile, like the smile one would wear after knocking into something hard enough to bruise skin.

"We're here." Akechi tugs on the door handle of Jazz Jin, tilts his head at her.

Akira nods, and lowers her bag to let Morgana climb out of it. He looks at her with a squint, like a wordless admonishment of " _are you sure you really have time to be doing this now_?" 

Akira blinks back at Morgana, hoping her message gets conveyed. It'll be fine. It's been nearly back to back Mementos missions and Palace explorations. I just need some of this time tonight to ignore that.

Morgana waves his tail once in response, and finally turns to whisk himself away into the Kichijoji crowds.

Akechi orders their drinks. Akira leans back a little on her chair, breathing in the smells of old wood and mellow fruits. There's a murmur of something else stronger than that in the air as well, like a ripening apple on a bough, and slightly smoky—some kind of cologne?

Was that from—Akechi?

"Is the drink good?" He's looking at her. Expecting an answer, probably.

"Yes." Akira looks down, realizes she hasn't taken a sip from her glass yet. "The drinks here haven't disappointed me yet. So, yes. I assume so." 

She holds her straw to her mouth. It starts with a burst of blackberry, as if it had been dipped in honey. A lighter note then, of lychee. The last layer tastes of dark cherries, perhaps mixed in with a surprising touch of mango juice.

Akira takes her hand off her drink, and smooths it down her dark skirt. "Did you happen to watch the drama you mentioned earlier?"

Akechi runs a finger down the side of his glass, and shakes his head. "No. Let's just say my work and my current extracurriculars leave me little time to do so."

"The fans of it seemed pretty excited."

"I don't discount its appeal—at least based on what my TV contacts have told me. The escapism of watching someone else fix things that you can't handle in your own life...I can understand the attraction of it, even if I don't agree with it."

"Wouldn't some argue that the escapism of watching someone else tackle problems offers encouragement to viewers?" Akira spreads her right hand over the table's surface, taps a fingernail lightly against it. "Proof perhaps, that not all problems are unconquerable."

"Life isn't a script though, is it? Even with the best of intentions—" Akechi's mouth twists, "—it's all too easy for the good-hearted to falter, and for the crooked to continue as they are unhindered."

She picks up this line of conversation, until it meanders onto Phantom Thieves business, and their previous Mementos missions.

"Weren't you afraid," Akechi asks her, "the first time you entered a human heart?"

Akira looks up from her glass, locking eyes with Akechi. "Girls grow up with stories about monsters in the dark," she says, and shrugs. "I don't know how much of a difference it makes now that I can see them."

Ann, crying with desperate despair at a mall's burger diner, alone and without allies. Akira herself, her spine prickling with dread as she and Ryuji walked away from Kamoshida, tamping down the urge all the while to sprint down the hall away from those eyes. Haru, biting back her fear as she sat at a table with the fiance chosen by her father. Akira's mother speaking with hushed tones on the phone about a girl in her company who had been fired for turning down a VP's advances. 

Don't go out too late in the evening, not without numbers for protection. Don't travel too far in the forest, lest the beasts tear you from limb to limb. 

"You'll miss it then." Akechi is staring at her, a thoughtful light in his eyes. "Being a Phantom Thief," he clarifies, when she makes a questioning sound.

"Yes." Akira's straw sucks on air, and she sets down her empty drink. "Won't you?"

A flicker of his lashes. A tilt of his chin into his hand, his elbow resting on the table. "If I have to confess—I just might miss it, more than a little. You're a good leader—you'd be surprised by how many of my current colleagues are not. If you were serious about taking up a detective post—"

Akira pushes up her glasses, crosses one of her legs over her knee. "I don't think 'Akira Kurusu, Detective Princess' has quite the same ring to it as Joker."

Akechi laughs, showing a flash of teeth. "I could probably get you a nameplate with that, if those are your conditions."

When the jazz singer finishes her set, they go outside. Akechi trails her for a bit as she looks for Morgana.

A little later, after she's hoisted him into her bag and they're on their way to the train station—

"Akira-san!"

Akira stops walking. Akechi stops too.

"I thought I recognized you!" 

It's Kaoru, with two shopping bags in hand.

Akira lifts her hand and waves. "Hey. Haven't seen you in a while, Kaoru."

"Well, cram school wasn't in session today, and Dad needed some things but was waiting for a delivery at the shop—" Kaoru stops talking. "I'm sorry. I don't think I've met—" 

"Akechi. Akechi Goro," Akechi says, serene and self-assured, and holds his hand out. "I've already met most of Akira-kun's friends, but you happen to be—?"

"Um, I'm Iwai. Iwai Kaoru." Kaoru shifts some of the bags in his arms, and shakes Akechi's hand. "You're the—detective they show on TV. And you're with Akira-san here because—?"

Huh. Akechi's not jumping in with a reply, but is looking towards her too.

What should she say? We just finished our drinks at Jazz Jin? He's walking me to the train station?

"I just wanted to see him today. He said he had time." There. A diplomatic response, right? And not a single word of it was untrue.

"Oh, I see." Kaoru turns his head between them, though a note of confusion still seems to linger in his eyes. "If I knew you would be around today, I could have asked you about some of your favorite shops here, Akira—". There's a beep from his pocket. Kaoru pulls out his phone, and he jumps a little. "It was very nice to see you again, Akira-san, and to meet you Akechi-san. But my cram school classmates are waiting for me—they said my share of katsu is getting cold."

"You should go see them then. Send my greetings to your Dad, Kaoru."

Kaoru nods cheerfully, and weaves back into the crowd.

Akechi and Akira continue walking. 

Akechi is holding himself rather stiffly today. He's not hurrying ahead, or going slowly a step or two behind her as he sometimes does, but is matching her pace. An inch of space is kept to, rigidly, between his shoulder and hers.

"Well," Akechi says, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Did you happen to attend the same cram school as Kaoru-san?"

"No," Akira says. "I knew him from work." She watches her feet swing from one step to the next. "Actually, I think his father thought about setting us up to date once."  
  
It was a funny thing. One day, you have to argue with a guy three times to get him to agree to hire you to work in a model gun shop, and on another day, he makes an approving comment about matchmaking you with his son, if you happened to be interested in him.

She thinks she hears an odd pause in Akechi's footsteps next to her, for half a heartbeat. A quick inhale of breath by her ear, before he continues, with a studied kind of casualness, "Is that so? And what did you think about such a...proposal?"

Akira squints. From the angle she's at, his face is in the shadows just beyond the edge of the subway's streetlamps, though she thinks she can still see a faint gleam from his eyes, like sparks against dark wood. 

"I did talk with Kaoru for a while, at a diner before. He's nice, but not exactly my type," Akira says, and slides her pass into the train station turnstile. Crosses through, making sure not to catch her bag on its arms. "I'll be on my way. Good night."

As her train pulls in, she turns her head back, sees Akechi leaning against a lamppost, still looking at her over the barrier.  
  


* * *

The day after she finds out Akechi is planning to kill her, Akira finds herself doing pull-ups on Leblanc's roofbeams.

_"They'll think the leader of the Phantom Thieves has committed suicide. No, the rest of that wouldn't be necessary. Of course not, no, I'm not disagreeing—sir—Yes. I understand perfectly."_

"I'm not sure I get it," Akira says, in between gritted teeth. "His plan seems a bit—complicated, isn't it?"

"Wait, wait, wait—if you're talking about detective boy, isn't he all about complications? Like, with the chess games and ohh-I'm-so-good-at-crosswords and I'm twistier than Featherman R Movie 3.1 complicated?" Futaba presses a stop button on the recording on her laptop. She's sitting cross-legged on the attic floor, headphones on her ears as she cricks her neck to watch Akira try to build up her strength. 

Pathetically trying, being the operative word. Kasumi's advice and practices had helped a lot with flexibility, but these workouts burned a lot more right in the moment compared to the stretches and jumps Kasumi had her do. Akira thinks of the easy flips she could do in the Metaverse, and vows to throw in a couple more the next time they go into Sae's Palace.

"The thing is though—" her tenth pull-up now, "—even with complications, he likes to do things by his own hand. So who—?"

"Who's the Big Finale Boss behind Akechi, yeah? I'm working on that, but I'm still gonna need time to sift through results. This might be a shocker but there's a depressingly, and I mean _depressingly_ , large number of deep-pocketed ethics-starved adults who are willing to hire other people to do their dirty work."

"Yeah. Futaba?"

"What?"

"Are you—?"

"Hey, if you're going to ask me if I'm okay—I am okay. Not 100% capacity, but definitely above the nine-zeros, still in the green bar. Cool as a cucumber. We did the whole talky-talk character development arc thing in my Palace. But, thanks, y'know. For asking about it."

Silence lingers for a moment, with Futaba tapping away on her keyboard. Akira will have to remember to ask her about it again, at a later time. Perhaps not when they were trying to pull together another big plan on top of a Palace infiltration. 

Akira wonders longingly if working out in the Metaverse would translate to stronger muscles in the real-world. Cognition could do that, right?

Ooph. Her fifteenth pull-up now. "Are you also mad that he gets to the crossword puzzles before you do?"

"Hey! Featherman Red! Are you or are you not secretly hiding away the puzzles until the days he gets to Leblanc? Because I remember you did a bunch of them first but stopped, and now I never see them actually out on the counter except for the times when _he's_ here."

"Can't talk," Akira says. "Working out."

"Should I tell Morgana downstairs to come up here and bark at you?"

"He doesn't bark."

"Hup, hup, hup." Futaba waves a Pretz stick in her right hand in Akira's direction. "More moving, less chatting, Leader!"

Up. Down. Up. Down.

"Futaba, do you want to join me in working out?"

"Nope. No can do. My bones are not meant to bend that way."

"But what will you do if the team is all knocked out and you have to, uh, punch evil to save the day?"

"Mwehehehe. That's when I'll use Futaba's Special Mecha Transformation X of course!"

Finally, finally, Akira lets go of the roofbeam, and drops to the ground. Her bones ache. Gravity seems to have an irresistible effect here. 

A couple of her curls flops into her eyes. She might need a haircut soon.  
  
And see if Iwai had new upgrades for them. And get more supplies for resting areas in the Palace—all right. She'll do that tomorrow.

Of course, she should have remembered to check the weather.

Tomorrow arrives, and now she's in Kichojoji. It's raining. Morgana had cracked open an eye from his spot on Leblanc's stool, and yawned, giving a hard pass on accompanying her out today.

She opens up her umbrella once she leaves the train station, glad to smell the open air and pattering rain instead of the musty damp of too many commuters crowded in a too-small space.

She meanders her way to one drink machine, looks at the yen in her wallet.

A voice calls her name.

She turns, and the boy who wants to kill her waves at her.

Her feet make their way towards him, and she tips back her umbrella to avoid splattering raindrops onto his face.

"Hey. What are you doing out here?" Did he not bring an umbrella with him?

Akechi smiles at her. "Admiring the scenery, I suppose. As for you," a slight lift of his eyebrows, "what brings you back here?"

"Shopping," Akira says. She blinks. The rain has somehow misted up her glasses already. She breathes out, and in, and the mist disappears, after a moment.

She's not sure where she can take this conversation. So she takes a step away from him. Then two.

She looks back.

That was her first mistake.

He hasn't said anything, but something about his posture, even through the curtains of rain, seems more downcast. His smile now a more neutral line.

Her second mistake is deciding to open her mouth. "Do you want to come with me? For the shopping?"

Surprise first, like a spill of sunlight over his face. Then another smile, a pleased one. "I'll be glad to."

Dammit. How is his face allowed to do that? 

He doesn't say much as he walks with her. He holds the umbrella as she drifts from shop to shop, from one vending machine to the next. Agrees to carry extra drinks in his hand when her bag gets over-heavy, and take along some snacks in his briefcase.

He was going to see her soon, in a day or two anyways.

She tells him a terrible joke that she reads off a snack package, and he laughs. He accidentally gets his briefcase stuck between a vending machine and an awkward space by a wall and she laughs, before she takes pity on him and slides her smaller arm in to get it out.

It's nice. It feels normal, for two people who are anything but that.

After one hour, two hours, her errands are done. The rain hasn't stopped yet.

"I guess this is where we part ways then," Akechi says. He brings up a hand to nudge some hair out of his eyes.

Oh. That was what had been itching at her mind all day. One of his hands still donned his usual black glove. The other one didn't. Meaning, that was the one which he had thrown at her.

"Yeah. I'll see you." She spins the umbrella between her fingertips once, before she grips onto the handle tightly again. Hesitates. "Do you want to come back to Leblanc? Curry's good during rain."

Akechi looks at her, something serious and considering in his gaze. Then he sighs, and smiles, apologetic. "I'm afraid I can't. Not today."

Akira nods. "All right. Stay dry then." 

There's nothing else left, so she leaves.

After she gets back and finishes her dinner, she drifts up the stairs to the attic. Lays back on her bed to stare at the ceiling. Closes her eyes and opens them, watches phosphenes fade into the ceiling like fireflies into the morning light.

Downstairs, it sounds like Futaba is playing with Morgana, teasing him with a laser pointer on the end of a pen.

There's a riddle here, one in which she doesn't have all the pieces. A Phantom Thief should be good at this, shouldn't she? Riddles, and mysteries, and clues all hinting at, _what_?

Sometimes, it felt like everything she was doing as their Leader was nothing more than throwing feathers up in the air, and trying to keep them afloat with her two hands without letting a single one touch the earth.

There's another story here, too—the crane maiden plucking out her own feathers one by one each night, weaving them into silk to keep her home and her love alive.

Akira takes out her phone, sets it on her workshop table. There's half-done sketches of Palace maps, pieces of twisted metal, curled loops of string. She slouches back onto her bed, crooks out her elbows as she props the back of her head on her hands.

When she had been young, they had played cat's cradle, with string. A game for two, old shapes changing to new ones with a tug of the fingers. 

But what happens if one of the players decides to tangle it into a hopeless knot? Or decides to cut through the string entirely, leaving the other standing there with nothing but frayed threads?

"Akechi Goro," Akira says softly, a declaration to an empty room. "What am I supposed to do about you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +second part of this should be more from akechi's pov, which Should get written at some point. hm.
> 
> +title explanation: there's a couple different variations on the Sovay song! [in some versions, she has a sword and pistols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzU4xIFNHVE), and in other's just pistols; this song has things like a woman dressing herself in disguise as a thief, rings, riding to see a lover, extreme tests of true love, the usual stuff, here's an excerpt:
> 
> Sovay, Sovay, all on a day  
> She dressed herself in man's array  
> With a brace of pistols all at her side  
> To meet her true love, to meet her true love, away she ride.
> 
> As she was galloping on the plain  
> She met her sweetheart and bid him stand:  
> “Stand and deliver, young man,” she said,  
> “If you do not, if you do not, I'll shoot you dead.”
> 
> He delivered up his golden store  
> And still she craved for one thing more:  
> “That diamond ring that I see you wear,  
> Oh hand it over, oh hand it over, and your life I'll spare.”
> 
> “From me diamond ring I wouldn't part,  
> For it's a token from me sweetheart.  
> Shoot and be damned, you rogue,” said he,  
> “And you'll be hanged, and you'll be hanged for murdering me.”  
> She being soft-hearted much like a dove  
> She turned her horse and she rode away from her true love.
> 
> +Fairytale reference: [The Princess and the Six Swans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Six_Swans)  
> +The song that plays in the backdrop when they're at the noodle stall: ["Shinjuku Blues"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-6V3SdFslM) with [an explanatory post here](https://kayokyokuplus.blogspot.com/2018/02/hiroko-ohgimina-aoemeiko-kaji-shinjuku.html)  
> +Ambiguous illusions: [Necker's cube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necker_cube), [Rubin's vase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_vase), [squares turning to circles in a mirror by Kokichi Sugihara](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWfFco7K9v8)  
> 


	2. my life i'll lose but my ring i'll save

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He looks over. Leblanc's lamplight tints Akira's face in faint gold and rose tones as she leafs through the papers in front of her, dark eyelashes sweeping down as she scrutinizes the words on them seriously —
> 
> In an unconscious motion, her right hand rises to tap her fingers against the line of her neck—slender fingers on pale skin—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> general chapter warnings:  
> +canon-typical violence including references to akira's injuries in the interrogation room, mentions of akechi's assassination work, akechi's attempted assassination on akira, brief mention of akechi's mother's death/suicide, a few mentions of blood and injury  
> +brief allusion to cannibalism in a myth  
> +some general drowning imagery in one scene & akechi thinking vaguely about jumping into water
> 
> +happy birthday akechi, idk how u got me to write this gigantic shoujo flavored fic for u

  
Akechi uncaps his fountain pen, gently runs the nib of it against the edge of his planner.

There wasn't a lot of time left.

Not if the Thieves still trusted his info on Sae-san's deadline.

He still needs to speak to her about that particular matter though—what would be the best day? He circles a few possibilities, and closes his planner. Tucks away his pen back into its case.

He glances down at his watch. There was still a good hour and a half before he absolutely needed to make his way to the trains. Besides—he turns his head. There was someone entertaining here.

An hour before, he had watched her clear up a mountainous stack of dishes in the sink while she called out chess moves over her shoulder without looking at the board. Akechi had removed one of his knights as a handicap, and had proceeded to make moves for her and himself both.

Sakura-san, who had come back inside from checking on a shipment, had made a dry remark that if he knew Akira had such a good head for chess, she could have spent her weekends trying her hand at tournaments instead of cleaning coffee pots.

"Nah," Akira had said, her lips tugging up into a half-smile. "I think I prefer playing against just one specific opponent, instead of many."

Something in Sakura-san's face sharpens at that, and he pushes up his spectacles with the tops of his fingers. "Oh? Just one specific opponent, you say?" he says, and directs his stare towards Akechi.

Akechi lifts his fingertips from the white queen—Akira's piece—and merely smiles. "If I'm distracting you from your cafe duties, Akira-kun—"

"You're not," she says immediately, and runs a hand through her curls. "Boss, if there aren't any more customers, I think I'll do my homework down here, if that's okay."

"Ah, well—" Sakura-san makes a harumphhing sort of noise, and looks away from Akechi. "That should be fine, kid. Homework, huh? You do have exams some time next month. I better go see if the delivery people have finished moving in all the rice bags to the right place."

"Sorry," Akira says, after she had began pulling out materials from her school bag. "We'll have to finish the game some other day."

"No worries, Akira-kun." Akechi looks over the board, memorizing the pieces's positions—he has a slight edge in his position, but Akira is putting up an admirable fight—and looks back up. "Your attention to your studies even now is commendable."

"Hah. Morgana would agree with you," she says, and glances absently over her spread out papers and flips open a book. "And while I'm studying here, he's taking a nice nap on my bed."

Akechi shifts the chess board to an empty spot, and picks up an unfinished novel from his briefcase. He opens the book, and blinks as her words register in his mind. "Sorry—you said Morgana sleeps on your bed?"

"I did think about buying him a cat bed at some point, but it seemed a little insulting to him. It's nice to have someone next to you when the weather is getting cold too."

At this point, Akechi is very aware of the fact that he's taken off his jacket and had slung it over his briefcase earlier. He's wearing his white long-sleeved winter uniform shirt. There's only a mere breath of space between his arm and Akira's forearm on the counter.

A soft clack as she tucks her legs up onto the lower beams of her stool—her height is just about equal to his. If she moves, one of her knees would end up pressing into the side of his thigh.

"I mean, you've seen my room," a flash of a rueful smile here, from Akira, "and the bed is a bit of a tight fit just for one person, but since Mona is cat-shaped, it's not really an issue."

Akira, in her bed. He has seen her room, he remembers—the mattress looks just about long enough to accommodate her height . He may be an inch or two taller—if he had tried lying down on there, he thinks his head would definitely end up bumping against the wall.

If Akira was there—would her hair be as soft as it looks, sometimes? Or would it be thick and easily tangled? He's a little curious—he had allowed her to touch his hair, after all, that one time in the cafe—so—

He looks over. Leblanc's lamplight tints Akira's face in faint gold and rose tones as she leafs through the papers in front of her, dark eyelashes sweeping down as she scrutinizes the words on them seriously—

In an unconscious motion, her right hand rises to tap her fingers against the line of her neck—slender fingers on pale skin—

If two people were there in her bedroom—Dangerous.

Dangerous.

This topic is wandering onto dangerous territory.

"Akechi? Hello? Goro-kun?"

"Ah—yes?"

"Interesting book?" Akira says, and smirks at him.

"What?"

"You had been looking at the same page for a couple of minutes."

"Just thinking about a tricky passage," Akechi says, and punctuates it by flipping a page.

Akira looks at him for a second, and then shrugs. "All right," she murmurs, and looks back down at her pencil in hand.

A few minutes later, he hears her reading to herself softly aloud. In English—not in the smoothest reading, but her determination to make it through the sentences lends a certain charm to her cadence.

"This vast amphitheater, with its encircling galleries...was an agent of poetic justice...Am—Amphi—Amphitheater. Theater. Arena. Performance—a stage."

Her pencil scratches over her paper, presumably taking notes.

" —everybody knew that the deed with which the accused was charged had been done. He had loved the princess, and neither he, she, nor any one else, thought of denying the fact..." She trails off and frowns. Puts up her chin into her hand and stares off into the distance. It's like the look she gets sometimes in Mementos as Joker, after taking on a new Persona.

Akechi should finish the paragraph he's been reading.

He looks at Akira, for one minute. Two. Her pencil hasn't moved in that time, and she is still frowning.

"You've been looking at the same page for a couple minutes," Akechi says. "Is it a difficult reading?"

"Ann helped us a bit with some of the harder words the day before. And it's short, so it's not excessively difficult."

"Oh—which story would this be?"

Akira pushes the paper in her hand over to Akechi. "I see. So. 'The Lady or the Tiger,' hmm? I've seen this before a while back, though my memory may be rusty."

"Chouno-sensei said when she assigned it that she wished she could punish any terrible dates she had by feeding them to a tiger," Akira says, "But it's not exactly the vocabulary I'm having trouble with."

"Ah. What in the story do you disagree with?"

"That trial..." Akira balances her pencil on top of her hand, flips it into the air and catches it on her knuckles, "that trial isn't exactly fair, is it? If they already knew the crime which the lover had committed—and it's not a trial about his guilt or innocence—what kind of justice is that?"

"Justice by ordeal, or by combat—an old, if outdated mindset of determining righteousness. Justice by death or survival. The winner lives." Akechi clicks his tongue against his teeth, and smiles grimly. "Life, as the ultimate prize awarded by justice."

"It's not like there would be a law against the young man loving a princess," Akira says, and props an elbow onto the counter. "And they hadn't even married—that shouldn't have disturbed any possible political alliances the king was thinking of if that was a problem. So he was being tried, because..."

Akechi drops his eyes onto the paper, and lets them land on a particular sentence: _"Among his courtiers was a young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens."_

"That's correct, Akira-kun. What do you think the king's justice was intended to do? What was the trial for?"

"Not for breaking any written laws, but unwritten ones—" Akira traces a few parallel lines over her sheet of paper, and glances up. "Retribution for threatening the established social hierarchy, not retribution for any specific wrong done against any individual."

"Not the kind of justice you favor, I believe." Akechi flips the paper in his hand over. "Am I right to assume you disliked this story?"

Akira nods. "You would."

Akechi tilts his head. "Why? Because it ends unhappily, no matter which ending you choose?"

"Yeah. Also," Akira runs a finger along the corner of the paper in her hand, and folds it down, "what kind of father threatens the life of someone their child loves?"

Akechi holds himself very still. "Blood relation is never any guarantee of affection, I'm afraid."

"It isn't," Akira agrees, readily. "The ending choices also, they're too—limited."

"Limited how?"

"There weren't any other plans the princess could think of? None of the guards watching her lover could be bribed into letting him go? If she _was_ a barbarian princess, she couldn't jump into the arena herself to fight a tiger alongside the one she supposedly loved ? Beyond what's on the page, there's always another route, somewhere, somehow."

"Sometimes there isn't another route other than what is written," he says. Akechi takes a sip of his coffee and lowers his cup, turns it gently between his fingertips to rotate a full circle on the saucer. "I understand why you would wish there was though. To push your heart's desire into someone else's hand, or to cast them into the jaws of death...an impossible choice indeed."

He looks up from his coffee. "What do you think, Akira? Would you choose to give up your lover to another, if it was you?"

Akira's lips close together in a line, and part slightly. "As long as a person is still alive," she says, slowly. "They can still be found. But no matter what, I think I wouldn't leave such an important person to me to face their fate alone."

Akechi runs his thumb along his mouth, and smiles. "That is an answer of a sort. You wouldn't have thought to change the king's heart?"

"Maybe ," Akira says, "if that was all that was needed to save him. But even if the king did let the princess keep her lover, and keep him alive—everyone else, the guards, the whole audience in the arena—none of them had made a move to help him or anyone else who had gone through that trial before. It's not exactly like chess, in this problem."

"You've made some rather incisive points, Akira-kun," Akechi says. "Thinking outside the stage of poetic justice itself."

"Suppose so," Akira says, and clicks her pencil. "Well. According to your deductive skills, your best hypothesis as to the door she picked would have been—?"

Akechi moves his left arm. Drops it lightly to rest over the top of Akira's wrist, pinning it to the counter.

Akira doesn't shake him off. Merely slides a glance at him, her eyes a bit surprised but unfazed.

Akechi extends his index finger, underlining the last few lines on the paper in her hand and begins to read: "The more we reflect on this question, the harder it is to answer. It involves a study of the human heart which leads us through devious mazes of passion, out of which it is difficult to find our way."

He leans back a bit on his stool. Lets his arm drop away from Akira's hand. "So there it is. If you can tell me whether the fish in the aquarium are happy to be there, I can tell you whether the door in the ending opened to destruction or despair."

"The human heart, hmm?" she murmurs. Akira sits up a little, a flash of realization in her eyes. "But I am not a fish," she says, with the air of sharing a secret that they both already know. "How am I to know whether the fish in the aquarium are happy or not?"

"How indeed?" Akechi says, and smiles.

Akira props her chin on her hand. "Though I'm sure Zhuangzhi would agree that fish in an aquarium would be far happier than fish in a sushi restaurant tank."

Against his hip, Akechi's phone dings.

Ah. It must be close to time for him to go.

He shuffles his papers under his briefcase—he'll have to do those tomorrow, he only got half of his reports done while here—and packs away his things. "Good night, Akira-kun. Thank you for the riveting discussion, as always. I look forward to our next one."

"Good night," she says, and stands to follow him to the door. "Thanks for the study help."

He leaves. Five steps away from the door, at the junction from the alley to the main street, he turns around, watches the glow of the lights dim through the glass of the entrance. Imagines that she'll have taken off her apron, and meandered upstairs to fall asleep onto her bed, Morgana curled up by her side.

He shakes his head.

He shouldn't think overlong about such things.

He shouldn't.

* * *

Here's an old joke: if you kill a murderer, how many killers are left in the world?

Here's an old story: _mukashi, mukashi_ , long, long ago, there was a field upon which a persimmon tree had grown, a field in which lived a crab and monkey.

The monkey promises with sweet words to gather fruit from the tree for the crab. However, once he reaches the top, he flings heavy fruit at the crab, one after another. Flings them hard enough to crack her shell, knowingly killing her and leaving her child an orphan. No one else was present to witness her death, save for the crab-child that had hidden itself in the shadow of the tree.

Who will take the monkey to trial? Who will bring him to justice?

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

It's a tricky matter to avoid seeing it when if feels like he's wading hip deep through it each day. But to be honest, there have not been as many targets from Shido-san lately.

Ah—well, he could certainly delegate his press releases and dirty work, but even Shido-san has to make some concessions to show up at meetings and interviews for propriety's appearance.

Deaths would be more of an inconvenience to Shido's plans at this point, especially after the news cycle on Okumura's demise. If his opponents mysteriously died now—the news would certainly take some time to highlight that, taking away coverage from Shido's popularity. New opponents would show for the races, most likely—and it would just be a game over, restart from Shido's end, to find a way to remove an unknown variable from his path.

Akechi has not been to many Palaces. Besides merely possessing twisted desires, it takes a strong force of will to manifest one. It had exhausted all his strength with Loki, for the few he did venture through—espionage, luckily, and not assassinations as a general rule. One such Palace of a politician had been a showy garden labyrinth, spilling over with flowers—fragrant and decadent—roses yellow and lilies orange, fistfuls of red and pink blooms he knew not the names of—which fed on anything their roots twined around, taking in water, sunlight, and unwary guests.

Mementos was challenging for different reasons. The odd tremors underfoot. The ever-shifting red-black-purple walls, like the world was made of nothing so much as a giant bruise. The changing floors, turning and roiling with the suddenness of the tides without the predictable timing.

The Shadows.

It hadn't been hard for Akechi muster up the will to kill off the few Shadows he had been assigned to, this year. A far cry from his first time—.

No. He doesn't think about that.

The Shadows he had tracked, trailed, hunted—all of them whispered to him their worst deeds, their darkest desires dredged up from the morass of humanity.

Politicians, usually. People with hands gilded in gold and blood, the smell of rust shining from under well-manicured fingertips.

What secrets did they keep locked behind their neckties and collars?

Bribery. Sabotage. Assault. Murder.

Jealousy. Selfishness. Hypocrisy. Rage.

Some gave him a glimpse of what Shido would become in five, ten years, if Akechi had not offered himself up as an ace in his sleeve—power-grasping, self-interest rotting through their pores, willing to send out criminals and cleaners themselves after any who tried to resist them when they made a mess they deigned not to take responsibility for.

Sometimes though, they weren't politicians or the wealthy, but ordinary people he was ordered to target, those who had proved an obstacle to Shido's path. Sometimes a persistent petitioner. A recalcitrant attorney. A news photographer.

Once, he remembers, Akechi had tried to suggest a psychotic breakdown, instead of a mental shutdown. He doesn't fully recollect the circumstances now—had it been for a man, a woman? A politician or a layperson? Regardless, he had made the suggestion.

"Humiliation surely would be a far greater burden for them than—"

"Akechi-san," Shido says, like the slice of a blade down an envelope's edge. He leans back against his chair; his smile attempts sympathy, but lands somewhere in the realm of supercilious. "I really expected more from you. Perhaps the fault was mine—you are still a student after all. If you can't find time in your studies to fit this in—then I'll just have to call on the cleaner for this matter. The right timing is just so very important in our world, wouldn't you agree?"

Akechi doesn't speak. Doesn't bow his head either.

Just stands there, patient and unmoving, his lips pressed together into a thin line.

Show no fear to Shido. He will think it shameful.

Show no pride either. He will crush you down.

"Well—the cleaner may be messier though. He lacks your efficiency, I have to admit. This one," Shido draws a finger down the lines of the file, "where did it say they live again? A Tokyo apartment with three children and an elderly mother, wasn't it?"

Akechi leans against the side of an armchair, and pulls at the cuffs of his sleeves. The timing.

The timing now is right. He should speak now.

Remember. Remember. Affect an apology but not too much. Let him know you have heard his reprimand, without cowering. "Apologies, Shido-san. I had only been thinking of your future schedule—it would surely not be open enough to make a sympathy statement for another opponent. I'll need some time to collect the information, but after, it should be done within the next two weeks."

"One week," Shido had said then. "You may leave."

Akechi went, and finished it. Reported back to Shido-san, within three days time.

Aim. Steady. Fire, just one shot. The Shadow says nothing—no screams, or pleas, or disgraceful sobs. It dissolves into the air.

No matter, how much his bones ache and muscles scream afterwards—he can finish it, and finish it well. This is fine. No one else can do what he does.

His mother had given up her body of flesh because she could not endure. Doesn't he owe her, owe his vengeance this much? There were stories once, of a child who showed such filial piety that they carved out a strip of their flesh into a stew pot to feed their mother during a harsh winter.

Akechi, though, no matter how much he must give—Akechi refuses to bleed out just yet.

He'll have to endure it. Just a little longer.

Akechi dissolves out into the crowded streets of Tokyo.

There's nowhere he has to go, no new orders to take note of and carry out at present. He's just a student now, like the hundreds of others milling down the sidewalks and chatting on their phones, walking in and out of shops.

A familiar tune winds around his ears, as familiar to him as the sound of shoes against concrete.

_Going there is easy, but to return is frightening. I am scared, but let me pass, let me pass..._

It would be easier, so much easier, if Akira-kun had a Shadow.

But Akira Kurusu does not have a Palace. Akira Kurusu does not have a Shadow.

Nothing to whisper venomous taunts at him, unsheathe her cruelest thoughts, her darkest secrets. Nothing to latch onto to make him hate her.

What she has shown him instead is—

"What do you think about maid cafes, Akechi-kun?"

Akechi's hand freezes, his coffee cup suspended midair halfway to his mouth.

"I beg your pardon?"

Sakura-san is standing _right there_.

Akira-kun spins a coffee scoop in her hand like an old-timey gunslinger, and glances at Akechi, her expression all innocence. "An acquaintance I knew mentioned starting a new job at the one in Akihabara. Do you think I could pull off the uniform, maybe get some more customers to Leblanc?"

"Uh," Akechi says.

A loud cough from Sakura-san by the entrance of the kitchen, a newspaper half-folded in his hand. "Kid," he says. "Don't burn the brew. I'm heading out to the conbini to pay some bills, and run some errands if I have a mind to. I'll be back in about an hour, you hear?"

"I got it, Boss," Akira says, and ducks her head, her tone pitched just right at the edge of deferential. Sakura-san puts down his newspaper and shrugs on his coat. The door jingles behind him.

The cafe now is quiet. Thankfully, Akira has dropped her first topic of conversation, and is now half-crouched at the counter, staring eye-level at the water in the bottom globe of the coffee siphon. Her eyes are focused, fully absorbed in her task with an intensity that makes them gleam like pearls beneath water.

As of now, there are approximately 13.5 million people living in Tokyo. Out of all of them, this girl, Akira Kurusu—who is she really?

Serious, selfless, and awkwardly earnest in one minute. In the next, sharp and light-footed, a showboat with a sly secret sense of humor.

Something about Akira, he thinks, is refractive. Resonant.

Like a song you had once heard long ago, so long that your tongue could no longer shape its name. But once you hear it again—even just a few notes, just a few lines—recognition latches onto your cerebral cortex, hooks into your amygdala.

Memory meets emotion.

Then your body responds accordingly—neurons firing signals down your synapses, sweeping through your veins. Your heart rate speeds up.

You respond accordingly. You laugh. You weep. You tremble.

Akechi fidgets with a coffee spoon between his fingers, turns it over and stares at his stretched out face on the convex side.

"Bored?"

A sound of shifting paper over the counter. He looks up from the open magazine to Akira's hand, to her face. "This is...?"

"This week's crossword puzzle," Akira says. Takes up a pen from her pocket and rolls it over to Akechi's left hand.

"It's strange," Akechi says, uncapping the pen. "Seems rather serendipitous that every time I'm here, the crossword of the week is not yet filled in by any of the other customers."

Akira draws back her hand to readjust her apron ties, pushes a couple curls away from her forehead. "Is that so? It is a little strange, I suppose."

A ding arises from the phone at her hip. She only glances down at it for a second, mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like " _quiet_ , Futaba."

She turns back to her coffee-making. Akechi goes over the crossword.

He lays the pen to rest on the page once the last one is filled in.

Akira wanders over eventually to perch on the stool to his left. Argues with him whether the plural form of a word should count as a proper answer for question 6 down. He avows steadfastly that his answers were legitimate, thank you for your input, Akira-kun.

She gives him one of those smiles, that little half-curve of her lips when she's amused, but doesn't want to concede, and something in Akechi twists, like skin stinging after a fall before the wound begins to bleed.

This girl had chosen to dally with death. Had waltzed up to him with a curtsy, and a almost hidden glint of laughter in her dark, dark eyes.

And death had—Death had bowed back. Smiled, and took her hand into his and kissed it.

He won't give this place up to Shido. This is the only kindness he can offer her.

A useless kindness from a useless boy. That knowledge won't give her any comfort when she's dead.  
  


* * *

"Do you want to try it?"

"Try what exactly?" Akechi turns off his saber, tucks it at his hip.

Just two or three steps behind them, he can hear Oracle, Noir, Mona, and Panther holding a fervent discussion about the best cafes in the city. Fox, Skull, and Queen bring up the rear, a little further behind. Though Queen's voice seems a little subdued, Skull's animated enthusiasm about the merits of the film "Admission Possible" versus "Like a Dragon" more than makes up for her quiet responses.

Joker swivels her neck around once, and knocks her elbow into Akechi.

"Try that," she says, and tips her chin up towards a high beam, her curls falling lower along the side of her face with the motion. "Flying."

Crow purses his lips. Looks at the grappling hook she now flourishes in hand, like a magician showing off a card from a deck. Looks at her eyes, the glint in them charmingly carefree even through her mask.

"Will it even hold us both?"

"It will," Joker says. "If you believe it will."

She extends a hand to him. Her gloved palm is bright and red, an unmistakable flash of color even in the garish lighting of Sae's Palace.

"I promise not to let you fall," she adds.

He tips his head to the side, stares at her hand for a moment more. One second. Two.

Steps forward and takes it.

"We're going ahead Mona," Joker says, murmuring it over her shoulder. Her other hand holds up the grappling hook attached to her wrist.

Akechi wonders if this was a wise choice.

A hiss, a click, and Akechi's heart jumps into his throat.

Up, up, and up.

Mid-air, she does a graceful spin, a three hundred sixty degree whirl without losing hold of him.

They're...rather close, aren't they?

One of his hands is wrapped around her waist, clutching at her hip. One of hers is likewise entwined around his torso. The ends of her curls brush against the side of his neck.

He thinks he can feel the heat of her bleed through from her skin to his hand, even through his glove and the fabric of Joker's dark coat.

She lands perfectly on the beam, her coat flapping to a stop behind her.

She stands, and he stands at the same time. Bends his knees a little.

"Well—that was—"

"Fun?" She tucks away her grappling hook to her side, her grin bright and a little wild.

"It was."

He's still holding on to her.

He withdraws his hand from her side, shifts it into a motion like he's brushing lint off an epaulette.

It's not as difficult to see up here as it was in the House of Darkness. The higher height of the roof beams softens the harsh gaze of the casino chandeliers.

There are no Shadow guards that they can see below. Joker and their team had done a fairly commendable job of clearing all of them out, before everything else. The House of Darkness. The Battle Arena, where Akira had stood, solitary and alone, her spine straight and her head held high.

If there had been a moment where Akechi's hands had clutched tightly around the bars blocking them from the arena, a cry of warning locked behind his teeth, well—who else was to know?

But Akira had merely picked herself up from her knees, still swaying slightly from the last Megaton Raid the Thunder Emperor had hit her with, and shook her head.

She had bared her teeth into a sickle-sharp smile. Threw out a hand to call upon her Persona, had snarled, " _Ravage them_!"

She had swaggered out of the arena after, the rest of the Thieves tumbling forward in their hurry to embrace her, slap her on the shoulder and chirp their praises at her.

Her hands were shaking, Akechi had noted, even while she was smiling around her friends—her real friends. As if she had sensed his stare, her eyes had flickered up to catch his.

"You did well, Leader," he had said, and bent his torso into a bow.

Joker had breathed out and relaxed her shoulders, tucking her hands into her pockets.

Now, instead of racing forward over the ledges in this Palace, as he had seen her done before, her steps light as air, Joker sits and pulls her right knee up, dangles her other leg freely over the edge.

After a moment's pause, he sits too.

Not right up close to her side. Merely close enough that there was an inch or two between their gloved fingers, laid flat against the ledge. One ivory white, one red.

"You know," Joker says, her voice low. "We really wouldn't have made it this far without you."

"I'm sure you would have found another way to cross Sae's bridge, if it had come down to it. You or Oracle, or someone else."

She shakes her head. "We might have, perhaps. But you are part of the team too. I'm glad." She rests a hand upon her knee, lowers her chin to rest against it.

Crow turns, looking for any signs of falsehood or mockery in her face. Finds none. "What for? I merely did what was necessary for us to advance."

"I'm glad. That we could rely on you. That I could—." Drifts into a second of silence, before opening her mouth again. "If we had needed to return to the Battle Arena a second time, or a third—I wouldn't have fancied my odds."

Akechi watches her face. Eyes half-closed, lips pressed together in a contemplative line. "What were you thinking?" he says. "When you were in there, fighting?"

Slowly, daringly, his fingertips perch onto her shoulder.

Joker turns her head to face him. Opens her eyes. Gray and lucent even in these shadows, like rainfall, like starlight between moving clouds. "I was scared." A flippant laugh. "Not very fitting for a lionhearted leader, is it?"

"You still fought," he says, voice quiet and careful. "It was a hard battle, but you still went in and fought. That alone is worthy of admiration."

Joker smiles. Drops her knee to dangle both legs over the beam. "I think you know—but the first time I went into the Meta-verse, I wasn't alone—I had Skull and Mona, and Panther, after. I was all right, with being alone before—but it's different. Once you get used to having people around—it's different when you're just by yourself again."

"I understand—" Akechi's grip on her shoulder tightens, just a little. "—I understand what you mean."

"Yeah. You had bet on me," she says. Reaches up to squeeze Akechi's wrist on her shoulder, in one quick, careless motion. "Thanks. We'll have some time, won't we, before the calling card needs to be sent."

"Unless the investigation deadline changes," Akechi agrees. Draws away his hand from her shoulder, lowers it slowly back to his side.

Joker holds a finger up to her lips, taps it against her mouth with concentration.

Red against ivory—he stares, just a little.

"I wouldn't mind seeing you again," she says, apropos of nothing. "After all of this..." She trails off. Her left hand resting by her side curls up, fingers clenching together for a moment. Then it relaxes.

"I'm still here." He tips his head to the side. "This mission isn't quite done just yet."

"True." She stands, narrows her eyes over the stretch of floor below. "Looks like the others have reached the elevator. We should catch up."

Only three days pass before Akechi sees her again.

Right outside of Shibuya station, he blinks up at the sky, the sheen of sunlight surprisingly bright despite the overhanging clouds.

He takes some care to navigate around the crowds, filled with the usual types. A few students, their heads bent close together over some magazine. Salarymen, two or three of them good-naturedly ribbing a younger-looking one about a new engagement. A loud strumming of chords, from one of the busking musicians—a guitarist?—who tended to congregate around train stations like this one.

Further ahead, at the street crossing, the light flickers from red to green. A familiar refrain floats over the rumblings of pedestrian footsteps.

Akechi stops walking.

Near the tail ends of the crossing crowd, a figure reaches the curb of the sidewalk. They seem to be struggling through the waves of people, their movements not dissimilar to a rhinoceros beetle trying to scurry through tree sap.

The figure seems to be carrying a large package on their back, rectangular and long enough that it dwarfs above their head by a couple inches.

Dark jeans over long legs. A white long-sleeved shirt. Glasses, worn just above a stubbornly set frown.

Should he—?

He didn't have to go speak with her. He had his winter exams to study for, a report to send in about Sae, and—

A passerby clips into Akira's shoulder, and she jerks backward at the motion. Then she awkwardly rushes forward two, three steps to avoid being pushed into the street.

The passerby moves on without even a muttered apology.

Akechi's hand tightens on the handle of his briefcase and he moves closer. Ten steps, five steps, two, and one. "Finished some shopping, Akira-kun?"

A hand rises to swipe at her forehead, and Akira looks up. "Akechi—? Oh. Hey."

She's flushed with exertion, a wash of light pink over her cheekbones. She lets her hands down from the straps of the box she had been holding to.

The box starts to slip from her shoulders, and she hurries to grab on to the straps again.

"Would you like to sit somewhere?" Akechi says.

"Where to?" Akira says, and tries to turn her head to look around. The box swings with her movement, and a passing dog barks at the left side corner that almost clips its ear.

"Sorry!" Akira calls after it, and stops moving.

Akechi walks to her left side, puts a hand on the side of the box to help support some of the weight.

Luckily, a bench opens up shortly after Akechi glances around and he spots two go players pack up their goban and walk off, having an energetic argument about the best tea shops around Tokyo.

They sit, with Akira rolling her shoulders after leaning the package against the back of the bench. She rotates her right wrist, the fingers of her left hand reaching up to encircle it.

"So that box is—?" Akechi puts a hand up to his chin, raises one of his eyebrows.

"A low bedframe," Akira says. "My new bed, I guess? The department store had a half-off fall sale, and Morgana said it wouldn't do for the Leader to have poor posture from sleeping on a stack of crates. Figured he was right."

"You weren't sleeping on a bed before—?" Akechi draws his brows together, his tongue pressing against his teeth. He has been in her room before. All the Phantom Thieves have.

Akechi himself—he had usually stood behind Akira when they had gathered, watching her hold court. Her squabbling band would falling silent as if spellbound after she had finished listening to them and spoke at last, her voice matter-of-fact but not unfeeling.

He hadn't looked too closely at her bed. He faintly recalls a mattress and a pillow, and comforter drawn over it. Sometimes Morgana sat on top of her bed, when their little team had spilled into the attic, lounging on all the available chairs and couches around the table.

"You couldn't have had this delivered?" he says.

And if there wasn't, were none of her many friends available to help her carry it? Had she not even thought of asking them?

"I wanted to try it out first, see if it was good with my height. Delivery fees were a little steep too." Akira tucks a curl behind her ear, and taps her fingers against her jacket pocket. "Besides—it's just one subway stop from here to Yongen-Jaya."

"Miss!" The shout is cheerful and a young girl, with her hair in pigtails and an orange coat over her shoulders, trots up close to Akira. "Miss! Where's your funny kitty?"

Akira creases up her forehead, a seeming flicker of confusion passing through her eyes. Then she moves out of her seat, crouches a little to talk to the girl. "You're the one from the train. Hello. Mr. Funny Kitty is resting at home today."

"Aww." The girl looks down, her lips curving down into a pout.

"Are your parents with you right now?" Akira says. Lifts her head a little, to look around the square near the station.

The girl tugs on Akira's shoulder. "Mommy's just sitting over there!" She points to a lady in an amber-yellow dress, visibly in sight on a circular-structured bench about five feet away. "We're going to look at toys today to find a new friend for me, since I just turned six! It might be a kitty!"

"Wow. Happy Birthday," Akira says. "You know—do you want to see a magic trick?"

The girl's eyes widen. She bobs her head, her pigtails swinging with the motion.

"Give me a minute—" Akira says. A rustling sound, as she pulls something out of her pocket, and with a few quick motions—

" _Ta-daa._ Your present from me," Akira says after. "For your sixth birthday."

She presses something into the little girl's hand.

"It's a tiny kitty! A paper kitty!" the girl says, eyes large with wonder. Akechi cranes his neck—sees what looks like gold-brown paper, folded up into a recognizably cat shape.

"That's right." Akira gives her a small smile. "If your new toy needs a friend too—the paper kitty here can be its first one."

"Thank you! I'll be careful to keep Mr. Paper Kitty safe! Until he can meet his new friend today!"

"You do that." Akira's smile widens, just a little. She waves a hand in the direction of the circular bench. "Don't make your mother worry too much. You should go back to her soon."

"Okay! Thank you, nice Miss!"

With that, the girl flies away as fast as she came, both her hands cradled together to hold the origami cat in her palms like it was something precious.

Akira stands. Brushes off the knees of her jeans, and backs up to sit down next to Akechi again.

"You have a knack for charming children it seems, and not just your allies."

"Mm, not really. Kids are easy to entertain, that's all." Akira lifts another small sheet of paper from her pocket. "The flower shop said they couldn't use these scraps for wrapping bouquets, so they let me take a couple of them with me." Her fingers move again—folding in corners and creasing lines with a smooth, practiced elegance.

At the end, another cat rests in her hands, the gold foil shimmering in the sun. She holds up her right hand to Akechi. "Here. This one's yours, if you like. For luck."

Akechi picks it up lightly, looks at it for a moment. Tucks it into his top pocket, next to his handkerchief. "Thank you."

His eyes fall to her uplifted palm.

Without thinking, he picks up both her right hand and her left in his own, and narrows his eyes. Makes a tsking sound with his tongue. "Whatever did you do to your hands, Akira-kun?"

Her hands rest palm up against his gloves, her skin pale except for the red welts running across both of them, almost connecting into one continuous line.

If the tone of his words is very nearly tender, neither he nor Akira decides to remark on it.

She blinks slowly, her eyes just a little—a little—startled behind her lenses, and exhales. "The box was heavier than I had expected. It was my mistake."

The colors of her Joker costume had suited her, Akechi had thought before. Blacks and deep gray and reds—but the contrast of red and white here was unusual.

One of his thumbs sweeps lightly over the line of red on one palm, from the base of her pointer finger, curving up to her wrist—and he stops.

Akira's eyes behind her glasses are just a little wider, her lips slightly agape. Had he imagined it—or had her hands shivered in his, just for a heartbeat?

Akechi swallows.

"Medicine," he says, his voice a touch too loud to his own ears. He stands, loosening his hands from hers, and shifts his briefcase to the space he had been sitting in. "Wait here a moment, Akira-kun."

Akira curls in her fingers once, and unfolds them. "Okay," she says, without looking away from him.

It takes a mere matter of minutes to find a conbini near Shibuya station and to purchase the supplies he needed. There is almost a moment where it seems like the cashier had recognized him, but the grumblings of a long line behind him had staved off any intrusive questions.

When he gets back to the benches, Akira is still sitting there, her hands laced together. There's a smile on here face, curious and a little inscrutable.

When Akechi walks closer, two birds startle up from the ground at Akira's feet, and fly to a nearby electric wire above them, unleashing a couple suspicious caws at him.

Akira brings a hand up to her face, laughs softly. "Those crows were sharing a peanut, before you got back. I suppose they thought of you as competition."

"What was that they said about birds of a feather, then?" he says, half in jest. He sits. Pulls his gloves off his right hand first, then his left—this would be easier without them. Take out the ointment and the small roll of bandages he had bought, and looks at Akira.

"Your hand, if you would," he says. Opens up a hand in front of her.

Akira looks at him for a moment, eyes moving from his face to his palm, then to the ointment he holds in his other. "Thanks," she says, a couple curls falling forward over her ears as she dips her head.

She turns her right hand over, extends it out to lay over his left.

He opens up the ointment cap, applies it swiftly to her skin. Opens up the roll of bandages, and unwinds it. "So," he says, wrapping the first loop around her palm, not wanting to let the silence linger, "how did you meet that girl? The one you gave the origami kitty to?"

Akira puffs up one cheek, and bites her lip, as if holding back a laugh. "Promise me you won't think less of me after the story, all right?"

"Cross my heart," Akechi says, and tugs at the bandage, testing the tightness of loops around her hand.

She tells him.

That she hadn't paid the pet fare, that the little girl had seen Mona on the train, and in a stroke of luck, Mona had the good sense to pretend to be a toy as Akira patted his head repeatedly like she was playing the hardest level of a video game.

Akechi can't help it. He ties up the last knot on the bandage on her other hand, and tips back his head, the laughter rushing up his throat. "I truly am amazed, Akira-kun. I'm always surprised by you every time we speak." His chuckles die down a little. "Did Mona ever forgive you for the indignity?"

"Mona should have," she says, "After all the sushi containers I had to sneak up to my room to feed him with. I'm afraid of hurting Boss's feelings if he ever notices them in the trash and decides to ask me if convenience store sushi is truly better than his curry recipe."

* * *

  
Pretense is an old weight for Akechi—just his shackles melted down, newly reforged into a shield.

With enough time, he tells himself, with enough practice, it will become weightless. Barely worthy of notice, like the knot of your tie around your neck. The cuffs of your jacket brushing against your wrists. The automatic curve of your smile—delighted, deferential, or dangerous by turns, when called on.

Akechi doesn't just _pretend_ —if he has to become something, he will become the best at it.

The son who had tried to smile, feigning that he was full from snacks at school, pushing half a vegetable bun towards his mother.

The diligent student, silent and composed, keeping his eyes fixed on his science textbook as two other orphans shoved and taunted a smaller boy in a far corner.

The detective prince, a brand new charm and trinket for the public to marvel at, Shido's ace in his sleeve, the assassin in his pocket.

A crow swaggering in borrowed feathers—wasn't that how the story went? Something for the other birds to peck and tear at with their talons at the end, before they finally fly away to spread songs of shame and ridicule from their throats.

When he's with Akira though, he feels—. Something different.

When he's with her—who is he supposed to be? A detective? An enemy? An infatuated lover—?

A rival?

_"Why don't you abandon your friends, and run away with me?"_

The moment after he had asked the question felt suspended. Invisible but palpable, like the breath of a storm in the air before the clouds roared.

It was a stupid question.

He had thought she would laugh.

But Akira had looked at him, her eyes slightly round behind her glasses, her gaze grave and thoughtful, and said—

He had wanted her to say no. He had wanted her to say yes.

If his will had been just a little weaker, he would have—

His palm hits the wood of Leblanc's door. He pushes it open, hears the familiar bell jingle above his ear.

"Kurusu?"

No answer.

His jaw tightens.

They were already missing Violet. If Dr. Maruki had taken Kurusu too—

A sound drifts in the air, quiet as a hushed breeze over a carpet of new snow, and he turns. Loses some of the stiffness in his shoulders.

Instead of moving behind the counter, or perching on one of the stools, Kurusu had taken a seat in the booths. A magazine with a half-filled puzzle is open on the table before her, a pair of glasses laid on top of it. An empty plate, speckled with breadcrumbs. A butter knife, a coffee spoon laid across it.

Her head is nodding off, almost dropping down onto her forearm laid flat on the table—not fully asleep, not just yet. Her eyes are closed.

He breathes in. Moves a step closer, and raises a hand to her shoulder. "Kurusu—?"

A clattering sound, metal knocking against porcelain. A scrape of shoes against wood.

A thud.

Akechi's back hits the wall, a hand bearing down on his left shoulder, holding him there.

A knife presses up to his throat, right under the curve of his jaw. A wrist and an elbow dig against the front of his chest.

Akechi's own heartbeat kick up in response to the pressure.

The knowledge that it's just a butter knife does help a little, but it's not his own skin he's concerned about right now.

Kurusu is breathing hard, the rhythm of it too quick, too fast, like wingbeats of fleeing birds. Her eyes seem to be staring at a point somewhere distant and far away, and not at Akechi's face.

To Akechi's right, the familiar yellow telephone on the counter has been shaken from its hook, and it dangles now in the air, its beeping dial tone echoing in the quiet.

"Kurusu," Akechi says.

If it was in battle, he might have propelled her backwards, lashed out with a kick if he had to, struck her with a downwards slash with his sword.

"Your name is Akira Kurusu," he says, does his best to keep his syllables soft and measured. "You are in Leblanc. The Leblanc of the fake world Dr. Maruki created, to be more exact. It's January."

Something shudders through Kurusu's eyes. The hand against his shoulder and the forearm against his chest eases their pressure.

A brief clink, as the knife falls gracelessly from her fingers onto wooden floorboards.

"Akechi?"

"Yes. It's just me." Akechi draws down his shoulders, tries to keep his posture relaxed. Kurusu's voice, when she had spoke, had sounded as if she was still half-caught in a dream. Just a little bit unguarded. Just a little bit disbelieving.

"Right. You're here." She breathes out. Tips her head forward slightly, squeezing her eyes shut. "Okay."

Her hands lower, curl up a little in the lapels of his peacoat.

Get a hold of yourself, Kurusu.

He bites on his tongue. Watches her exhale, in, out.

If he was a better sort of person, he might reach up perhaps. Put a steady hand around her shoulder or a light stroke of fingers down her hair.

Kurusu takes one step back from him. Bends down to pick up the butter knife. "Why did you come here?" she says, and if she hasn't regained all her previous composure, her eyes don't show it.

He's not sure what he should answer.

Habit? Curiosity? He had seen the lights of Leblanc turned off all day, the sign turned to show "Closed" on the door.

There's something to be said for the comfort of repetition.

"There's not much for us to do now," he says. Sits down at one of the tables, finds the expected board there. Begins setting up the pieces.

Kurusu stares at him, just for a second. She moves to put down the knife on the table. Picks up her glasses to place them over her nose.

She makes her way to the chair across from him, and slides into her seat, eyes moving over the board and fixing onto Akechi's fingers straightening out the pieces.

The game is terrible.

Akechi, for once, chooses to hold his tongue. Though if Kurusu had been playing for Akechi's life on this board, he would rather that she had chosen something like darts over chess.

The match ends far too quickly. Akechi merely looks up, and raises a brow.

She nods. They play.

The next time Akechi's feet take him to Leblanc, a few days after recovering Yoshizawa-san, he stops by the door.

Hears his name from the inside.

"—or Akechi-senpai might be jealous!"

"Jealous of what, exactly?"

He sees Akira Kurusu first, standing behind the counter, her hands adjusting the apron ties behind her back.

Sumire, sitting by the counter, turns her head slowly. Her eyes are wide and she laughs when she meets Akechi's eyes, looking like a child who has realized that they had just knocked a plate onto the floor.

"Greetings, Akechi-senpai! Akira-senpai and I were just talking about. Um. Nothing important. Just some topics. Things. New things."

"Girl things," Akira says calmly, obviously taking pity on Yoshizawa. "Chocolates. Stuff like that."

"Right, right!" Sumire nods, enthusiastic. "Oh! Valentine's day is soon, isn't it? Are there any special chocolates you want to make for anyone, Akira-senpai?"

What an inane topic. Akechi opts for a booth seat this time, instead of a counter stool. He sits, pulls out a magazine from the side, starts to leaf through it, some morbid curiosity compelling him to see what other changes Maruki had wrought in this universe.

A fleeting sensation of _something_ presses on him—like the feeling of someone staring at him.

He looks up. All he sees is Akira, eyes fixed on the pour of the coffee she's holding over a cup.

"Maybe," he hears Akira say, setting the cup in front of Sumire. "Oh—It's supposed to be trash collection day tomorrow. Please excuse me a moment."

Really.

Really now.

Akira was just like that, then. Upstanding moral citizen by day, kind to children and prompt with trash duty, even in a fake universe. A Phantom Thief pursuing justice by night.

"Senpai!"

Akechi closes his magazine, not with force but definitely with a smidgen of annoyance. "I'm in the middle of reading something, Yoshizawa-san."

Sumire cocks her head to the side, and smiles, unfazed. "That's okay. I just wanted to sit here for a minute," she says, and slides into the seat opposite him. "About what you might have heard me say earlier—"

"I really am not interested in a minute-by-minute playthrough of a talk about girl things—"

"It's important," Sumire says, her brows drawing together with a determined look. "Well—important for me to clear up any misunderstandings you might have. Akira-senpai would never talk about you behind your back! That's the truth!"

"Mn. I'm aware. And yet, someone brought up my name."

"Ha ha. Hahaha. The things is—" She sits up a little straighter. "The fault was mine. I only told Akira-senpai that she helped me so much with my confidence, and was such a kind person, that if she had been a boy, there would have been definitely a danger of me falling in love with her!"

"So?" Akechi raises his chin. "And that matters to me, how?"

"But I know that you and senpai are—" Sumire's words slow down, her face twisting into a complicated expression. "You two are— " A pause. A hesitation, a moment where Yoshizawa-san seems to be considering retreating.

He can't help it. Like a child prodding at a new bruise, he prompts her, "The two of us are—what?"

"You mean a lot to her. And she, to you."

Akechi sucks in a breath.

See, this was the problem with working with kohai. Some were too invested in their team's well-being for their own good. "I don't understand why you felt like you had to tell me this, Yoshizawa-san."

"Because—" Sumire runs a finger around the rim of her saucer, staring down at her cup. "I've seen the both of you fight together. Talk together. Protect each other, when the other is badly hurt by a powerful enemy. Akira-senpai trusts you a lot and—"

Akechi snorts.

" —and," Sumire continues, undeterred, "she still smiles as much as she normally does, but I can't tell if it's always because she's happy or not. Or if it's because she wants us to not worry. Lately, Akira-senpai has seemed a little—I don't know. Troubled, sometimes."

"Not a surprise. We're in a very singularly unpleasant situation right now."

"I can't help her as much as I want to," Sumire says. Stares at Akechi, something in it pinning him down like the point of a blade through cloth. "But you might be able to. She knows that she can rely on you."

Akechi would beg to differ, but before he can say so, the bell jingles.

Akira's back.

She looks at the two of them. "Coffee, Akechi?"

"That's fine," he says, and looks away from her.

"Thanks for listening," Sumire says, and gets up from her table. Waves to Akira, who acknowledges it with a nod, and leaves.

What a team we are, Akechi thinks.

Death trailing each of their footsteps, lurking in their shadows as they walked.

A girl who once wore the guise of her sister, the living possessing the dead.

A dead man, his heart beating and breathing in a dream world.

A dead girl who defied her fate against weighted odds, an Odette and a Giselle still dancing on stage after their acts were closed—an encore pulled off with nothing more than her wits and her very force of will.  
  


* * *

  
One day passes. Two days.

Akechi steps out of the station. Looks to the right, and the left.

He could wander up and down the shopping district as he typically does in Kichijoji. But something today about the crowds and their babble of relentlessly cheerful voices irritates him.

Inokashira Park isn't far from here though.

He tucks in his scarf a bit tighter as he passes through a pathway sheltered by trees.

There are sounds of small animals chittering out of sight in their burrows, twigs bending and snow shifting under their weight. Occasional ripples of water bloom into the silence, stirred up by birds on the pond.

He breathes in. There's not as many people here in the park right now as there would be in the busy season.

He doesn't see anyone else actually, except—

A figure swathed in gray and black, the colors serving as an unintended counterpoint to his own red scarf, his tan coat.

"Akechi," Akira says. Her breath steams white in the air. She turns, leans on her elbows against the wooden fence poles.

Akechi nods. Steps up to the spot next to her, and glances down.

It would be silly, he thinks, to purposefully avoid her in the park when she had already greeted him.

"Using this time to strategize our next move, fearless Leader?" he says, keeping his hands at his side.

"No." Akira waves a hand at the water below. "The ducks," she says.

It's annoyingly picturesque. The pond is a cool silvery gray, dotted occasionally with floating twigs and loose bits of leaves.

The ducks are more specifically a pair of mandarin ducks. The drake has the usual high purple crest and eyecatchingly deep orange feathers. The female duck of the pair has the usual plainer coloring, the soft gray-brown plumage that allows her to blend in with the woods.

"Was just thinking," Akira goes on, "what Futaba would probably call them. She'd probably name that one—" a finger points to the drake "—Featherman Red, I think. The other one would be Featherman Gray. Since the color scheme matches and all."

The drake paddles for a bit and turns, begins running his beak down the other's neck. Mandarin ducks were a common symbol of fidelity and happy couples, Akechi remembers.

Something about it digs at him, bleeds a tiny thread of spite into his voice. "I don't remember a Featherman Gray being allowed into the official team in the canon," he says.

"Oh?" Akira turns to look more closely at him. Amusement traces a curve up her lips. "When we get back—" she says, casual, "remind me to lend you one of my Featherman games."

When we get back. Like she assumes what they're going to do is so easy.

Like she assumes that Akechi is going back with her team, that he'll stay alive and uninjured for long enough to play through a game she would lend to him.

Her face, as she looks over the pond, is calm, untroubled. A little pale, in the cold, but her skin is smooth and uninjured.

_Akira-senpai trusts you a lot._

This is something Akechi has never told her:

After he had killed her, after he had completed his mission, he had walked down one hallway. Made one turn, and another. Headed through the door to the surveillance room to delete the evidence.

He hears his name first, before he even steps in.

_"I suppose I shouldn't have asked about your friends. Let's try a different question. Akechi Goro. There are rumors that he was a member of the Phantom Thieves as well. Is this true?"_

Standing in front of the monitor, Akechi sees his reflection overlaid on the screen, over the scene of Sae and Kurusu in the underground interrogation room.

It only takes a quick glimpse at her face to know that she had been injured. Eyes sometimes unfocused. Scattered bruises, marring her cheek and dark enough to be seen on camera. The way she's breathing, shallow, sometimes fluttering, like an injured deer trying to hide in the underbrush.

The silencer Akechi had used to murder her was still tucked beneath his jacket. She should have known, even before Akechi had stepped into the room. She would have known, that none of her other friends would have ever turned her in like this.

Sae's stare on the screen has all the force of an axe's edge. _"I'll ask this one more time. Was Akechi Goro a member of the Phantom Thieves?"_

" _No_ ," Kurusu croaks out, her answer soft but unmistakably clear, and shakes her head.

Stupid, stupid girl.

Who was she pretending to be?

Who did she think she was _protecting_?!

He rewinds the tape a little. Watches from the beginning.

Sees the raised hands. The shouts. The sneers. The injection of a 'truth serum.' Her, with her hands tied, her chair kicked over.

A forced signed confession.

He reaches the same point again. Sae's voice, unrelenting, _"Was Akechi Goro—"_

He presses the button to delete the recording.

Takes one step, two steps towards the exit.

Without warning, his left hand flings the remote at one of the viewing screens. It hits the screen with enough force to cause a spiderwebbed crack to appear in the corner.

What had Akechi longed for the most? The chase or the capture?

An essay question: define hate.

Define love.

Define death.

Was this the ending you had wished for?

He had sipped at a Triple Seven coffee later that night after a hasty meal. He'll need his energy if he's going to reach the culmination of his revenge within the next day or two.

The drink goes down in his mouth like bile.

_"You're the one person I refuse to lose to."_

You're the one person I refuse to lose—

* * *

  


Of course Akechi had read up on his Personas once he had come into his power with the two of them, once he knew their names— Robin Hood. Loki.

Sometimes, just sometimes during his daily business, and moreso in moments of heightened emotion, he could catch words, faint impressions from his Personas in his mind.

_"Unchivalrous," rumbles Robin Hood._

_"Unnecessary," snarls Loki. Even Loki—_

It's what must be done, Akechi had said.

They lapse into silence. Akechi knows, he remembers studying them—Robin Hood with Maid Marian, fierce and noble of heart, Loki and the faithful Sigyn—

Akechi continues his long, slow walk down the fluorescent-lit hallway. Passes Sae, with minimal pleasantries. Gets rid of the guard. All as they had planned.

Akechi's thumb strokes over the handle.

The real thing is much heavier than the plastic models, the pistols and the ray guns he had used in the Metaverse before.

Since she had seen him, Akira hasn't said anything. Only watches, her eyes silver and unwavering under the odd lighting.

Brave.

Too bad it wouldn't do her any good.

Once upon a time, there was a hunter with his steady eyes and a steady hand on his weapon, ready to draw blood. But the hunter looked on the princess, with her hair dark as night and skin pale as snow, and felt his heart moved by pity.

So he brought back a stag's heart instead of the girl's, to fool the ruler of the land.

Once upon a time, Hou Yi, the famed archer who had brought down ten suns, raised his bow at his beloved wife, Chang'e, rising towards the moon. The string flexed, tensed—his hand wavered—

One bullet would stop her blood from flowing, would stop her mind, her mouth, her smile.

Her heart.

Stopped.

Stopped.

Stop it.

What are you doing? What are you doing?

Stop it.

Stop it.

Stop it.

Listen—if he has to be a villain, he'll play the part. Let her remember herself as a hero of justice. Let her hate him without any regrets.

Bang.

 _'You truly are your father's son, aren't you?'_ a voice says somewhere in his mind, a voice that sounds remarkably like his own.

Leave her or kill her. And you had done both in the end.

_"—there's always another route, somewhere, somehow—" Kurusu says, her shoulder pressed against his—_

Turn back.

Turn back.

Pull her out of there.

Take her into Mementos—how many times has she saved one of her friends from the brink of unconsciousness, how many times has she saved you—you could do it, it's not too late—

No.

There's no path left for him, but forward.

* * *

  
"Do you have any idea of the position you are in?"

A strange clicking in the dark.

Round lights turn on. Spotlights, like the hungry eyes of some alien creature.

They're in a circular enclosed area. Akechi sits in a seat high up. On the large stage below—Joker. She's hard to miss in her mask and her coat and her red, red gloves.

It's an amphitheater. Shadows and light dance along its walls and floors, forming patterns like those in an underwater grotto. The air smells like salt, saturated with ozone.

There's no audience, save for a constant susurrus of voices someplace just out of sight, like the deep underground of Mementos.

"Who are you?" Joker says.

"Had you forgotten so quickly? We had made a deal before, little princess, daughter of the sea," the voice says, "but I am not without compassion."

Something shining whispers out of the dark, aimed at Joker—she catches it in her hand.

"Take this knife," the voice says, "and slay your faithless prince."

Another spotlight flickers on. Akechi's own body on a raised dais on stage, his hands crossed over his heart while in his Robin Hood costume.

Bright white and reds, with buttons of gleaming gold. Unmistakable and hard to miss.

Joker doesn't move. Just holds on to the dagger. Shakes her head.

"If you do not do this, you are doomed to dissolve into seafoam on the waves by dawn. Your friends will weep for you, and only the sea will hear their tears."

Joker doesn't move. Shakes her head again.

"I see," the voice says. "I suppose I wasn't clear enough. Did you not know?"

"What is it that I don't know?"

"He has already given you up to his father, the king, hatched a conspiracy with his guards—to kill you, and carve out a pound of your flesh as proof. Once he delivers it, the king will eat it and become immortal."

The sleeping Akechi's costume flares blue and changes to Loki, dark and striped and chained to the dais.

A sneering tone creeps into the voice's words. "Your prince is naught more than a pauper's boy, a smiling damned villain."

Joker straightens her back. Doesn't answer the tacit taunt.

He can't see her expression from here.

She turns on her heel, whisks away the dagger into a pocket. Heads right up to the dais, pulling out a lockpick from beneath her sleeve.

She unlocks one chain. Then the next.

The voice stops speaking.

Instead, a rumbling erupts from around the stage, like the clanking of some ancient monster's bones.

The sound of running water, gurgling a little at first, then more. And more.

Water starts rushing up to the stage, enough of it pooling up to lick at the hem of Joker's coat.

She ignores it. Pulls up the sleeping Akechi, slings his right arm over her shoulder.

The water rises.

He's fully resting on her back now, and she reaches up to tug down his other arm.

The water rises.

Wait.

That's not. That's not me.

Akechi rises from his seat. Starts heading down the stairs to the stage.

The water rises.

It's up to Joker's hips now.

Akechi runs.

He can't reach it. He can't reach it fast enough.

The water rises.

Up to Joker's shoulders now. He sees her stand on the dais, still holding the unconscious Akechi upright over her back.

It inches up to her neck. She starts treading, still stubbornly holding on to him—or what she thinks is him.

A wave washes over her head, and she gasps. Her domino mask is carried off with the force, floating on top of the water an arms-length away.

Akechi opens his mouth, tries to fling his voice down to her—" _Kurusu_ —!"

He wakes with an aching throat. His muscles feel tense. Heavy.

Sea foam. A prince. A sea princess.

A merfolk's flesh for immortality.

"Those mythologies aren't even from the same cultural traditions," Akechi complains to his ceiling.

He rolls his tongue around his teeth. A taste of saltwater and iron lingers. Like the air on Shido's ship. His dream. Both.

_They forgot in cruel happiness, that even lovers drown._

A buzz vibrates from his table-side. He slaps his hand up to it, unlocks his phone after two tries. It's February now, as the front of the screen so helpfully reminds him.

**Akira >>> ** _I'm up. Eating breakfast. Do you want onigiri? We have a curry flavor and a salmon one._

He sits up. Pulls on his coat. His scarf.

**Akechi >>** _Whatever is left is fine. I don't care._

He does drop by Leblanc. It's not like he's bothered stocking up much food in his kitchen fridge in his own apartment. Kurusu smiles at him, drops two onigiri into his hands, one of each kind. Sumire swings by shortly after he shows up, cheerfully shouting a greeting at Kurusu, and Akechi decides to leave after throwing out a brusque reminder to find him if Maruki shows.

He stops by the park for a little. Wonders what would happen if he decided to fling himself into the pond. Would this sham of a world refuse to let him sink? Would it pull him out, force him to expel water from his stomach and his lungs?

He won't though. Kurusu still needs him.

Still needs him for the team.

The onigiri, as he eats it overlooking the water, is good.

To his surprise, the day gets worse from there.  
  


* * *

  
Akechi should have followed his instincts when he overheard Maruki's voice from the inside of the cafe.

Should have grabbed the nearest coffee spoon from the table and carved out Maruki's throat with it.

"Don't forget this," Akira says after Dr. Maruki stops speaking, and flips the calling card to him. Her eyes are cold. Frost and animosity.

Dr. Maruki takes the card, looks between the two of them—his eyes going from Akira to Akechi—and leaves.

Mona too, decides that retreat is the better part of valor.

Akira stands. Shifts away from the table she had been sitting at.

He's glad.

It's a fight he wish he didn't have to fight—but it's better to stay standing for it. It makes his resolve feel more certain.

It makes it easier for him to flee too, if need be. He refuses to think too deeply about it.

A shouting match ensues.

Their words clash like wild, clumsy strikes of two blades. Both sides impassioned, intent.

The flashing of Akira's eyes, the fierce twist of her mouth, unfathomable.

Don't kid yourself. He knows exactly why she's looking at him that way.

If their conversation ends with something that's not quite accord, it is at least in agreement of their next action. They'll fight Dr. Maruki tomorrow.

"I'm heading out," Akira says, buttoning up her coat and flicking down Leblanc's lights.

"What?"

She doesn't respond, just holds open the door for him. "You should get some sleep, Akechi."

He steps out. The light from the sky and the streetlamps paint blue-tinted hues over her skin, over the black of her hair.

A click, as she locks up Leblanc. Tosses the key into her pocket and walks down the alley to the main street.

"Kurusu."

She keeps walking. Two steps. Three steps.

"Kurusu."

No response.

He lengthens his stride. " _Kurusu_. Where are you going?"

She exhales. Doesn't stop walking. "The batting cages."

"They're closed at this time of the night. Walking there would be pointless."

She pinches a finger between her eyes, above the bridge of her glasses. The set of her shoulders is tense. "The only reason I'm going there is because it's too late for a plan to ambush Dr. Maruki and I don't know where he lives. You can come with me if you want. I won't stop you."

Akechi shuts his mouth. Follows her as she goes to the batting cages. Watches her pull a lockpick from her sleeve, undo the gates to the batting cage and the entrance to the control room.

Before she goes into the cages, she takes out a couple bills from her pocket, counts it out and leaves it on the counter where the cashier would usually stand.

Akechi had looked up at a sign that clearly stated _'No guests inside the batting area'_ and ignores it, stepping in with Akira to stand a little to her right, out of range of the mechanically-thrown baseballs. There's no seating, so he leans against a stretch of fencing in the next cage over, his body turned to face Akira.

Akira taps her bat against the ground, hearing the hollow thunk of it on the dirt, and raises it up to rest it over her right shoulder. There's a brief grinding sound as the machine warms up.

"Ask me a question. Any question you want." She swings the bat once, testing it.

"What?"

"Each time I hit a home run, I'll tell you a truth. Each time I miss, I'll lie."

"This kind of game is nonsensical," Akechi says, feeling chain links press at his back through his coat.

"You're not playing, then?" A hint of a challenge there.

Fine. Fine. He'll play along.

Akechi shifts his weight on one foot. "Do you regret it now? Forming the Phantom Thieves?"

_Crack._

The ball flies to the target. Chirping bells and flashing lights, tinny victory music after.

"No," Akira says. "People were getting hurt. Myself included. The Phantom Thieves had the ability to stop that, so we did."

"Look where that got you."

"I won't apologize for that, Akechi."

Akechi taps a finger against his lips. "I am one of those people who had hurt you. Killed you, and others, in fact. You don't have any mixed feelings on working with a murderer?"

Another whistling sound from the machine.

_Crack._

"Yeah. You did. We knew. Futaba's mother. Haru's father. The others involved in Shido's little group." A pause. "Unless you're planning on doing it again, I don't see why I shouldn't work with you. The one who betrayed us and worked for Shido, and the one who saved us—they're both you."

"Don't be facetious, Kurusu. Even your heart has to have limits. I had a choice. I may not have aimed the weapon, but I pulled the trigger."

_Crack._

"You had a choice," she says. "The same way Yusuke had a choice when Madarame asked to borrow his works for an exhibit? The same way Sae-san had a choice when the SIU director ordered her to arrest the Phantom Thieves?"

"It's not the same—!"

"I never said it was." Kurusu's gaze hardens. "You did hurt them, and part of the cause does come from you. That can't be undone. It still doesn't negate the fact that you did what you did with a knife to your throat yourself."

She had told you once that she had grown up with stories about monsters.

I'm one of them. Don't you understand?

Like Nakajima's poet, a man turned tiger by night, sinking claws and fangs into blood—It didn't matter to me who I had hurt, as long as I could hurt Shido in the end. I didn't care enough to linger over second thoughts—it was a flimsy justification that most targets were just as bad as Shido was.

I only knew the worst of those I had struck down, but you—but you —

"I've caused others to suffer, caused you to suffer—and you still wish to claim that you care about me? What is it that you even want, Kurusu?"

_Crack._

"What I want," she says, slow and clear, "is for you to want to live."

How maddening. Why would she ever want that?

Why should he care what she thinks of him?

Shido's voice, in the back of his head— _"I suppose a person as young as yourself wouldn't have any debauched desires."_

His cognition on the ship, a twin in every aspect of his appearance, eyes cold with contempt— _"You would go to these extremes for the Phantom Thieves? A pity that their leader did have such a pretty face—I'm sure the captain would have allowed you to keep her alive if you had asked very, very nicely—"_ and his words cut off as Akechi slammed him into the nearby wall, teeth gritted into a snarl.

What was one girl, against a revenge years-long in the making? What was the matter of a few months, a few confidences freely given compared to a years-long resentment, too deeply nurtured and rooted to burn away?

What was one boy, against her six friends and the good of the people? What was one boy, against all of reality?

"Do you hate me?" he says.

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but if he's not coming back tomorrow, then why not. In front of her, he's already given up his dignity, his facades, and his lies.

It's just curiosity.

"I—," she says. Stops.

She takes a half-step closer to his cage, shifting on her heel, and a baseball collides into her side at a speed of 90 kilometres per hour.

The bat drops from her hand, rolls over once onto the diamond on the ground.

"Dammit Kurusu, weren't you paying attention?" Akechi pushes himself out of his cage, striding over to where she stands, her right hand clutching at her left shoulder.

She rolls the joint of her shoulder, testing it. "It happens."

He's seen her take worst hits than this in a Palace, and stand back up, unflinching. Electricity. Fear. Fire. Despair.

Though there had been an incident once when the aftermath of two consecutive Dizzy ailments had necessitated him to carry her on his back.

He had, after all, complained that Joker was walking too slowly. Joker had then complained that she was afraid the points of his helmet were going to give her some very uncool scars—to which he had grumbled, revised his attire, and suffered the indignity of walking through the Palace in his Loki outfit, minus a helmet.

He pointedly ignores the memory of her breath ruffling over the ends of his hair, the warmth of her chin pressed down over his shoulder.

Ah. Perhaps his time with the Phantom Thieves has made him greedy.

Robin Hood was a thief too, don't you remember? He lied. He stole. For nobler reasons than most would, but a thief, still.

Akira, Akira, Akira, smiling across a Mementos battlefield or a layered drink at him, a dagger or a dart twirling between quick fingers.

I don't understand why you would still want me around. It made sense when you were facing someone powerful like Shido, but now?

"I don't."

"Excuse me?"

"I don't hate you." Akira brushes her hands on the knees of her jeans, and picks up the bat from the ground. Blinks her eyes at Akechi, the edges of them a little red, but no longer holding the same shaky, trembling light they had before. "Thanks for the. Talking. You know." A wave of her hand through the air, a shrug of her shoulders. "I better get going if—"

"Ask me a question," Akechi says.

"Why?" Silvery shadows criss-cross Akira's face, making her expression unreadable.

"A question for a question. It's fair," Akechi says.

"Anything goes?"

"Yes. Anything."

Silence. Akira's eyes on his, her look pensive. Serious.

"Can I kiss you?"

Akechi hears nothing for moment but wind rattling through the metal of the fences behind them, the gentle buzzing of the electric lights overhead.

Bravo, Kurusu.

I've underestimated you. You're a far crueler person than I am.

Still.

It's not an impossible ask.

He would have allowed her to do far more than that, if she had wished to.

As a parting memory goes, it wouldn't be an unpleasant one.

"Sure," he says. Shifts to stand a little closer in front of her.

Waits.

Akira focuses on him, as carefully as she would when studying a new lock. One of her hands drifts up to rest on his shoulder, her gaze narrowing.

Akechi keeps his eyes open.

She tips her chin up.

Draws closer.

Soft heat, as her lips touch against the corner of his mouth. The bottom rim of her glasses knocks against the side of his cheek.

She steps back.

Akechi finally remembers how to summon words to his tongue. Swallows. Speaks. "That was for—?"

"For luck," Akira says simply. "See you." She moves back, tucking in her coat tighter around herself.

Akechi takes a step forward, his fingers curling into his palms. "Kurusu. I don't need it."

"Don't need it?"

"Luck. If I say I'll do something, I'm doing it." A pause now. It's a dangerous one, like the vertigo before leaping off a high cliff. If he waits any longer, he might say something—"Shall I return it to you?"

Another breath of silence.

Akira is still standing in place. She opens her mouth. Closes it.

Opens it again and says, slowly, "All right."

He moves slowly, watching her reaction.

He bends his head, close enough to her now that he can smell the usual scent lingering around her of coffee grounds, a whiff of wood, and something faintly sweeter, like figs.

She hasn't moved back.

So it happens like this.

He tilts his head. Presses their mouths together.

There's the light brush of her hair against his jawline. He's not holding on to her, but from how close they are, he believes he can make out the flutter of her pulse by her throat right under her ear, beating and beating and alive. One of her hands is laid flat against his chest under his loosened scarf, her fingers curling tight in his shirt. The other clutches at his shoulder, the touch of it recklessly sentimental.

He knows all right? This won't last.

He's not the kind of person who deserves the pity of the magpies, the flock of them that sang and swirled and gathered to form a bridge for two lovers, but just for this one moment—

Akechi wants—

He should let go of this. Of Akira.

They break apart.

Two Personas. Two doors. The two of them—hero or villain? Victim or victor?

Two endings.

She's already made her choice. All that remains is to reach the end of that path.

"—am I not allowed to miss you?" he thinks he hears her say.

A shifting of cloth, as her hand spreads over his chest.

"You should go back," Akechi says. It doesn't come out half as biting as he intended it to be.

"Your heart's still beating," Akira says, more to herself than anything. She shivers slightly as a breeze picks up. Steps away from Akechi. "I'll go."

He watches her glance back at him. Watches her walk towards the exit. He follows her, for now.

This has to be enough.

It has to.

If he lives—a ridiculously optimistic thought—a ridiculously optimistic word— _if_ —

If he lives—he'll see.

One day, he might just be able to see her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +just popping off a quick message that things have been scary and fucked up in the past, and things are also very scary and fucked up now. here's hoping you can all stay as safe as you can, take care of yourself, and take care of those around you as much as you are able 
> 
> +also this thing is finished...my first thing that is longer than 10k+ words...wow 
> 
> a references list for fun  
> +[the lady or the tiger](http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/LadyTige.shtml): most of u have heard this story at some point, basically like the trolley problem but with love thrown into the equation  
> +[Zhuangzhi and the Joy of Fish](http://www.chinaonlinemuseum.com/painting-fish.php)  
> +[the crab and the monkey story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crab_and_the_Monkey)  
> ; an additional fun fact, [akutagawa ryunosuke adapted a follow up fanfic story](https://akutagawaaweek.tumblr.com/post/107266383923/the-monkey-and-the-crab) to this in which the crab + his friends who gets revenge on the monkey gets put on trial:  
>  _Additionally, the crab met with hardly any sympathy in newspaper or magazine editorials. This is the gist of the criticism: “The motive for the killing was little more than a personal grudge. And was that grudge provoked by anything more than the crab’s own irritation at the monkey’s profit at his expense? Which was made possible by the crab’s own ignorance and rash actions? It is foolish, if not madness, to reveal this sort of grudge in a modern, survival-of-the-fittest society.”_
> 
> +[the filial piety story with the cannibalism, likely in the last story at the very bottom](http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~asia/24ParagonsFilialPiety.html)  
> +[toryanse, the traffic light song](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Dryanse)  
> +[The Bird in Borrowed Feathers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bird_in_Borrowed_Feathers)  
> +[Hou Yi the archer and Chang'e](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e)  
> +[The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen](http://hca.gilead.org.il/li_merma.html): _She saw her sisters rising out of the flood: they were as pale as herself; but their long beautiful hair waved no more in the wind, and had been cut off._
> 
> _“We have given our hair to the witch,” said they, “to obtain help for you, that you may not die to-night. She has given us a knife: here it is, see it is very sharp. Before the sun rises you must plunge it into the heart of the prince; when the warm blood falls upon your feet they will grow together again, and form into a fish’s tail, and you will be once more a mermaid, and return to us to live out your three hundred years before you die and change into the salt sea foam. Haste, then; he or you must die before sunrise._   
> 
> 
> +["The Mermaid" by Yeats](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-man-young-and-old-iii-the-mermaid/)  
> 
> 
> +[Sangetsuki](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2016-05-18/the-real-authors-of-bungo-stray-dogs/.102149)
> 
> +a fun fact about robin hood that I JUST HAD TO SHARE:  
> [maid marian once went looking for him in a forest and dueled him](https://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch150.htm) when they were both in disguise and couldn't recognize each other...they fought to a standstill until both of them were bleeding, then robin hood spoke and maid marian and him made out and then attended a party...fun times :'') (it's not true love until u try to duel each other guys)
> 
> And Marian was strangly attir’d,  
> That they provd foes, and so fell to blowes,  
> Whose vallour bold Robin admir’d.  
> They drew out their swords, and to cutting they went,  
> At least an hour or more,  
> That the blood ran apace from bold Robins face,  
> And Marian was wounded sore.  
> 'O hold thy hand, hold thy hand,’ said Robin Hood, ‘And thou shalt be one of my string,'


End file.
